A Shadow On the Mind : A Chosen Fate By Darktayl
by Blackstory
Summary: -RESUBMISSION- Tori, a young inhabitant of Oldale town, has long been denied her dream by her obnoxious family. A small rebellion in keeping a pokemon becomes something more, and Tori grows slowly more enamoured with the darker side of the world.


Title: A shadow on the mind: A chosen fate

Category: Games » Pokemon

Author: Darktayle

Language: English, Rating: Rated: K+

Genre: Adventure

Published: 05-28-07, Updated: 08-07-09

Chapters: 26, Words: 40,744

Chapter 1: Unreachable dream

This is another of those ideas that won't leave me alone... So I wrote it.

Ten-year-old Tori gazed out of her window in Oldale town, looking wistfully at the long grass where pokemon hid. It was six months ago that she had turned ten, the proper age for a trainer's journey to begin. Tori adored pokemon, but her snobby parents wouldn't have anything to do with them.

"We don't want you playing with filthy, vicious vermin like that, Tori," they said. They wouldn't even let her keep one as a pet! Tori looked down at the homework she was supposed to be doing, and then looked back out of the window. A new kid had moved in recently, and he was outside at the moment with a Treeko (sp?). it was probably the first time he had had time to be out of the house, thus a good chance for Tori to meet the new kid.

Tori crept downstairs and outside, and relaxed. She then trotted over to the kid and the treeko, who were training on a tree.

"Hi, you're the new kid here, right?" Tori asked, and the kid jumped. He looked up at her once he'd got a hold of himself, and gave her a weak smile and nodded.

"Yeah. M'name's Dan." he answered simply.

"Nice Treeko there," Tori commented. The treeko looked at her in approval, and stood taller with a proud expression.

"Thanks. I'm gonna start my journey with him in two days, I reckoned -" he broke off. "Do you have a pokemon?"

"No." Replied Tori quietly. Dan must have detected the note of sadness in his voice, because:

"Do you want me t' catch you one?" Tori was startled at the question. Her actually have a pokemon? Even with her parents around? She could... maybe... she could hide it somewhere! This was a chance she couldn't pass up!

"You'd really catch me one?" Tori asked, eyes wide. This was one strange kid, offering to give up free time to run an errand!

"Sure. There's not much of a variety aound here, but... oh well. One pokemon's better than nothing right?"

"Exactly." Tori replied happily. "Oh... and another thing? Can you not come round my house to give it to me?" Tori asked hopefully.

"Okay... but why?" Tori silently cursed him for having to ask that question.

"No reason," she lied. Tori felt a twinge of guilt at using him like this, but she really wanted a pokemon. Dan nodded.

"How about you meet me in the pokemon center at lunchtime? I'll have to heal the pokemon anyway." Dan ventured.

"That'll be fine," I hope. Tori added silently in her mind. Dan nodded cheerfully and jumped to his feet.

"C'mon pal, we've got a pokemon to catch!" Dan exclaimed to the treeko, who confidently jumped to his feet along with his eager pokemon, and they ran off into the tall grass, searching furiously for a pokemon. Tori heard something growling, and the noises of a fight breaking out.

Well that certainly didn't take very long, Tori thought to herself, and fiexed her attention to the swiftly moving grass tops. (I've made it so the grass ther is practically taller than people's heads, there's no other logical way that pokemon can hide completely in grass) Tori heard a yell of triumph, and then heard Dan talking.

"-No, she won't eat you," Dan promised. Tori giggled, the pokemon had obviously been suspicious. She briefly wondered how he could understand the pokemon, but then she remembered that some people had translators for pokemon speech. "Good." Finished Dan, and ther came a shout from where he was.

"Hey, Tori! Change of plans, to the pokemonm center NOW!" Dan hollered, and randomly ran out of the grass and straight into the pokemon center. By the pokegods, that is one weird kid. Tori thought to herself, and she shrugged. She made her way casually over to the pokemon center. Once she was in, she saw Dan taking a pokeball off of the healing machine.

"I'm assuming you caught something?!" Tori babbled. Dan grinned and held the pokeball as if it were a trophy.

"Sure did!" He replied, and threw the ball to Tori. She nodded thanks, eyes wide with anticipation. She pressed the circle on the ball, and again. A beam of red light zoomed from it, changing into a...

Sort of a cliffie. I will not write any more unless I get at least one review!

Chapter 2: Fury of the decieved

The pokemon I give Tori isn't very good, but oh well.

... a small, brown-and-cream coloured, spiky furred pokemon.

"Zig!" it exclaimed.

"This is a Zigzagoon right? Thanks!" Tori exclaimed.

"He's a very common pokemon, but he's a level 5. it's hard to find that level of pokemon around here." Dan commented.

"I love him! He might be common, but he is kinda cute." Tori declared, hugging the little raccoon pokemon. He was supposed to be a raccoon, but he looked more doggish to Tori. Dan looked sheepish.

"Glad you like him... hey, i never did catch your name," Dan pointed out. Tori flushed.

"Oh yeah, my name's Tori." Tori announced, slightly embarassed that she hadn't said it before. Dan just nodded. "Anyways, Zigzagoon is a bit of a mouthfull. You want a nickname?" Tori asked the little pokemon. He looked thoughtful, then shrugged. "You don't mind," Tori translated, and he nodded. "Okay then, I name you Bandit because your masky thing sort of reminds me of the thiefs that wear masks." Tori decided. Bandit gave a sweet grin.

"Zig!" He exclaimed, and made a strange approving noise. Tori looked up at Dan.

"Thanks, seriously, you have no idea how much I wanted one of these little critters," Tori thanked, tickling Bandit's chin. Dan looked embarassed.

"No problem. And don't worry about the pokeball, it was one I found lying around somewhere, so it didn't cost me nothing," He explained, and Tori had to keep herself from correcting his grammar mistake. Honestly, this pokemon will do me a world of good. Any longer without one and i'll start acting as snobby as my parents. Tori thought angrily to herself.

"Thanks, Dan. Really. Just do me a favour and don't tell anyone you got me a pokemon, I don't want my parents finding out," Tori requested.

"Why?" came his naïve reply. Tori grinned sheepishly.

"Well, let's just say they're not exactly very pokemon-friendly." Tori replied, then pocketed the pokeball. "Thanks again, i'm off to go train Bandit!" And Dan watched as the girl ran off, with the zigzagoon bounding joyfully behind her. Of course, his path was a bit ragged because zigzagoons tend to run in zigzag patterns. Tori ran into the long grass that was in between Oldale and Littleroot. The pokemon there would be weaker.

Tori tripped over something. That something turned out to be a large and squishy wurmple. Tori 'eep'ed and crawled away from the annoyed insect. "Bandit! Get it!" She yelled. She was fine with bugs, she just didn't particuarly like the fact that this one probably wanted revenge for be stepped on. Bandit nosed forward through the long grass, until he was in between Tori and the offending bug.

"Umm... I'm supposed to tell you to attack now, right?" She asked Bandit. He looked at her expectantly and slowly nodded. He seemed considerably smarter than most zigzagoons. "Er.. okay. Um... what are your attacks?" She asked Bandit, almost as if she thought he would answer. he gave her a look of pure disbelief, and suddenly growled viciously as the wurmple made to attack. The bug cowered, and it fought with some reluctance after that. With less force.

"Oh, so one attack is growl?" Tori asked. Bandit nodded with exasperation, then launched himself at the worm pokemon, tackling it to the ground struggling to avoid the worm's frenzied blows. "Tackle? Okay. Any more?" Bandit shook his head, then snarled and jumped away from the bug. "Okay then, use tackle!" Bandit's eyes lit up. Finally, they were getting somewhere.

Again, the small masked pokemon hurled himself at the Wurmple, and battered it quite horrifically. Tori was privately impressed at the pokemon's strength and courage, his eyes sparkling with obvious exhiliration. "Use growl, repeat!" Bandit started growling, feeling a touch of satisfaction that his trainer was now confident enough to give a proper order like that. Saying 'repeat' meant to use the move once, then again straight after. The bug cowered, and hesitated. Before he could do anything else Bandit growled furiously again, and the wurmple began frantically looking for an escape route.

Bandit saw his opponent attempt to crawl away, but stopped it by leaping narrowly above the worm, briefly buffeting it with his spiky tail. Bandit was surprised to see it sneeze, and temporarily leave it unguarded. Bandit growled in pleasure and looked pleased with himself as he spun round and hit the bug with his tail. The wurmple began thrashing uselessly about with its eyes closed, trying to get rid of the prickly tail attacking it.

"Hey, is that a move? Tail whip... that's the move name right? I read about it on the computer, it lowers defence. Cool! Use tackle now, it's weak!" Bandit growled an affirmative and used the only attack move he knew.

The wurmple fainted, and Bandit flashed a faint white colour. If Tori had measure him, she would have found he was approximately half a centimeter bigger than before. He had leveled up, he was now Level 6. Bandit strutted proudly back to Tori, who smiled.

"Who knew that beating a bug was so fun? C'mon, let's train more!"

And so they did. Tori and Bandit defeated two wurmples and three poochyena before the little pokemon needed healing at the pokemon center, and he was by then level 8. Tori returned her little warrior, for the day was getting old and the faintest traces of sunset were appearing in the sky. Tori sat on her bed for a while, rejoicing her parent's abscence as always. They would be home from work soon, but Tori still had some precious minutes left to think.

I've never had so much fun before, pokemon training is by far my favorite sport. But... If I train here, mom and dad'll eventually find out. Then they'll stop me from training Bandit... Gods, Dan is lucky, he dpesn't have snobby parents that hire people to exterminate pokemon, and soon he'll be off on a pokemon journey! Lucky - Wait! Pokemon journey? I could run away... leave a note so I don't have search parties after me. I'll go get a Pokedex from Prof. Birch... and i'll be off! Yes... that'll work.

Tori abruptly rose from her bed and withdrew a large camping backpack from her wardrobe. She immediately began packing it with all the things she deemed necessary. For instance, a sleeping mat made out of suprisingly lightweight and comfy material. She packed two changes of clothing, one for cold and wet places, and another for average sort of weather. She was at the moment wearing summer clothes, good for running in and keeping cool. She packed a big flasky thing which could contain soup, cold drinks, or hot drinks. Or basically anything liquidized that isn't acid or something. It was good for keeping hot things hot and cold things cold.

Tori then skooted downstairs and filled her lunchbox for school with very filling things, and then went upstairs and placed it in the bag. She also packed her swimming costume and a towl, just in case she found a seaside or something. The towel would be handy if there had been rain. That particular thought reminded Tori to put in a lightweight raincoat. She then placed her purse and Bandit's pokeball in seperate front pockets, which were quite large. There was still quite a lot of room left in the bag, which would be useful in times to come

She then withdrew a notepad from a chest of drawers she had, and a small ballpoint pen. She began writing a note.

Dear mon and dad. She started. I've gone away for a more simple a fun life, and to actually do what i've always wanted to. Don't look for me, I won't come back. I have protection with me, so don't worry about that. Tori was about to sign the note when she heard a key turning in the lock downstairs. Her heart lurched. Her parents were back from work!

Tori quickly stuffed the note in her backpack and shoved the backpack under her bed, then pulled the neatly folded spare blanket in front of it so she couldn't see the backpack even if she lied on her belly and peered behind it. Tori managed to pick herslef up as her parents walked towards her bedroom door, and Tori found herself feeling a bit nervous.

Why should she be nervous? Her parents weren't psychic, they couldn't tell she had a pokemon. Then why did they look so stern when they entered her room?

"I think you've got some explaining to do young lady. Martha from down the road saw you with a filthy little pokemon today," Her mother growled, and Tori inwardly groaned. Of course, Martha was such a snitch. She was her parent's little spy, sneaking around hoping for a tip from the rich people.

"A pokemon?" Tori asked innocently. Maybe she had a chance of worming herself out of this...

"Yes, a pokemon. How do you explain that?" Her father asked in a dangerously quiet voice.

"Oh come on! You know Martha will do anything for a bit of pocket money. She has to be lying!" Tori protested.

"Nice try missy, but she caught it on tape and I saw every bit of it," Her evil mother snapped. Tori gulped, no way out now. Here came the outburst -

"YOU KNOW THAT TRAINING THOSE VERMIN IS FOR COMMONERS! IT IS BENEATH US, AND THOSE PESTS WILL TURN ON YOU AS SOON AS YOUR BACK IS TURNED! I WILL NOT HAVE YOU SINK TO THE LEVEL OF THOSE PATHETIC PEASANTS!" Her mother yelled. (The parents are THOSE kind of people, who think that everyone else is beneath them) Tori's temper boiled.

"THEY WILL NOT TURN ON ME AND JUST BECAUSE YOU HAVE MORE MONEY THAN THE OTHER PEOPLE DOESN'T MEAN YOU'RE ANY BETTER! IN FACT, IT MAKES YOU WORSE!" Tori yelled back, and silently thanked the pokegods that they had soundproof windows. It was her father's turn to yell:

"WE HAD HIGH HOPES FOR YOU TORI! YOU WERE'NT LIKE ALL THOSE OTHER BABIES, YOU ACTUALLY STAYED OUT OF THE FIGHTING! WHEN WE ADOPTED YOU WE BELIEVED YOU WOULD NEVER SINK TO THE LEVEL OF THOSE COMMONERS!" Okay, that had really stunned Tori.

She was ADOPTED?!

"That's it," She thundered. "I'm adopted and you never even told me?! No wonder I look nothing like you, no wonder i'm not a SNOB like you two! Get. Out. Now." Tori commanded. The two people glared. "Get. Out. of . My. Room. NOW!" And to back it up, she stomped on their toes. Her foster mother squealed and with eyes narrowed the two evil people exited, Tori heard a key in the lock of her bedroom turn.

Tori trapped in! REVIEW!

Chapter 3: Escape from the oppressors

Well, from the summary you all know that Tori DOES escape. But how?

Tori sighed and adverted her eyes from the sky outside. Her foster parents had not let her out of the room for dinner, and her stomach rumbled constantly. All Tori could do was go over a checklist of things she needed for her pokemon journey and wait for night to fall. Eventually, she heard the telltale snoring of both the evil people that had supposedly been her parents.

Tori grinned, and withdrew an escape rope from her wardrobe. There had been a rock climbing activity in the Meteor Caves, and she hadn't trashed the rope after using it. It was still useable within a reasonable distance, and she was only on the first floor. Her foster parents were pretty stupid to think a locked door could keep her from her dreams. Tori suddenly remembered something important.

She took out her hairclip, and fiddled around with it in the lock for a bit, until it clicked and opened. With a satisfied grin Tori walked from her room, and into the cupboard that contained the safe. She had once spied on her foster parents opening it, and knew the code. 52175379, that was the combination she typed. And the safe swung open, revealing lots of cash. Tori nicked $2000, they probably wouldn't notice such a small vacancy of money. Tori clicked it shut again and quietly crept back to her room, and put the note on the desk.

Tori then grabbed her bag, opened the window wide, and slid down the rope and landed with a soft 'thump' on the ground below. Her hands burned painfully from the rope, which was now frayed and unusable. Tori ginned for a second, relishing her victory over her evil, snobby, foster parents. (I happen to strongly dislike people like her 'parents')

Tori ran off into the grass between Oldale and Littleroot, and only once the town was in sight did she find a hidden place to set up her sleeping mat in, and released Bandit for warmth and protection. The little pokemon fell asleep next to her almost instantly, his ears still pricked even in sleep.

In the morning Tori decided that Bandit must have fought a wurmple while she was asleep, because there was an unconcious one a good few meters away from her. Tori sratched Bandit behind his ears, something she found he adored.

"Breakfast time!" Tori announced, and withdrew her lunch box and vacuum flask from her bag. She was surprised to see Bandit holding an Oran berry. "Seems you've already found yours," She laughed, and began eating a rather crusty sandwich. Since she was used to gourmet food, it wasn't very satisfying, but it was time she got used to the food that normal people ate.

Once they had finished breakfast, Tori and Bandit trained for a bit. The local poochyena and wurmple were no match for Bandit, although he was considerably winded after a total of seven enemies had been defeated. He was nearly up a level, but not quite. Anyway, it was about the right time to go and get the trainer's gear from the pokemon professor. Tori rubbed Bandit's eears quickly before recalling him, then walked brightly over to the lab, and knocked on the door.

"Hello?" Asked the person that answered, he had browny hair and a lab suit so Tori assumed he might be the professor.

"Are you professor Birch?" Tori asked. The odd person nodded.

"I am. What brings you here?" Questioned Birch.

"I want to begin my pokemon journey... I'm a bit late, but oh well." Tori informed. Birch looked crestfallen.

"A young boy called Dan took the last starting pokemon. We have no starters left," He explained sadly. Tori almost laughed.

"I've already got a pokemon, it's no starter but he'll do. I just need the trainer gear," She told him cheerfully. Birch brightened.

"Good, I have a spare pokedex, oddly enough. Come on in!" He announced, and Tori followed him inside with a quite bemused expression. Some person Tori guessed must be an aide briefly glanced at her before finishing attending to a wurmple. Birch suddenly appeared with a red device and a small orange booklet and offered them to Tori. "If you're wondering where the five pokeballs are, they're in the small storage system in the pokedex. They were recently upgraded to be a pokedex and a pokenav!" Birch exclaimed. Tori nodded and politely took the two objects, and her face suddenly broke into a large grin.

"Thanks Professor! I'm off, I seriously want to get at least halfway between Oldale and Petalburg by tonight, so i'd better get going!" With that, Tori bounded cheerfully out of the lab and back towards Oldale, then stopped. Her foster parents would probably be looking for her, going into town would not be wise.

Tori shrugged, and began to push through the tightly bunches trees that hardly anyone wnt through, cutting diagonally through to Petalburg's entrance. It was rough going, and eventually Tori let Bandit out and had him help tackle a fairly easy path. Tori suddenly stepped on something squishy. She looked down to discover she had stepped on a rather large Wurple, and Tori's immediate trainer response was to dig through her pocket for the pokedex, and find out what level it was.

Pokemon out here were obviously stronger than the ones on the path, because this Wurmple was level 5, and a half. She considered catching it, because a normal type pokemon wouldn't do well against rock pokemon, apparently what the first gym leader trained. Maybe... she would catch it.

"Alright, Bandit, use tail whip on that bug!" Tori yelled.

"Goon!" Replied the pokemon, then he obediently whipped the bug vigorously with his bushy tail. The Wurmple's eyes watered slightly as zigzagoon hairs fell into them, and she tried to fight the oncoming tail.

"Quick! use tackle, now!" Tori ordered frantically, hoping that Bandit could attack before the Wurmple could make a move.

Too late. The bug shot sticky silk at Bandit, and soon he was completely encased in it save for his head. The Wurmple slithered up and prepared to tackle, not making any effort to be fast because Bandit could not escape. It prepared to ram the little raccoon's head, but when it neared him... (Tori was practically tearing her hair out in frustration)

... Bandit gave the Wurmple a powerful konk on the head, using his own head. While the Wurmple was recovering from the unexpected attack, Bandit bit off the silk encasing him, and as soon as his paws were free he pushed the silk away with those. Soon he was free again.

"Way to go, Bandit!" Tori cheered. "You levelled up and used headbutt!" Bandit nodded in agreement, then sweatdropped when he looked back at his opponent.

The Wurmple had evolved into Silcoon, and was looking sheepish because it had lost the use of its' limbs. It was rapidly hardening to prevent damage...

"Wow, that's pretty ironic. She evolved to get stronger, but now can't fight at all," Tori commented, eying the pokemon with a bemused look. Bandit nodded, and quietly sniggered. "Anyways, it's probably weak enough to capture now. Plus the fact it can't move," And so Tori fiddled around with the pokedex before a greyish slide appeared, glowed white, and a small pokeball ejected from it. The slide vanished.

"Pokeball, go!" Tori yelled, throwing the pokeball but forgetting to enlargen it. It bounced around for a bit, then one of the Silcoon's spikes hit the button in the middle, causing it to enlargen and suck the pokemon in.

It wobbled once. Twice. Then the button greyed, and the Silcoon was caught.

Well, Tori's doing okay isn't she? REVIEW!Chapter 4: Shoplifter

I happen to like this idea, because for once I have an ending for it! -

Tori whooped loudly before picking up the pokeball that contained the Silcoon it was now apparently level 7, it had levelled up extremely fast. Seeings it was a cocoon, Tori assumed it would have some kind of winged evolution, and so Tori checked the pokedex.

"It evolves into Beautifly... at level 10! How handy, it'll be fighting soon," She paused. "Well, it's a she. I think I'll wait till she evolves to name her," Tori decided, then scooped up Bandit and hugged the startled racoon. He was a bit bemused when she put him down.

There was two sets of barking heard suddenly. Getting louder... and louder... and louder.. until two poochyena randomly appeared, barking defiance at the unwelcome noise.

"Crud. Two enemies, angry ones. Looks like it's a double battle. Go Bandit, Silcoon!" The cocoon pokemon appeared in a beam of blood red light, and made an odd mumbling sound that was similar to it's name. The poocyena barked laughter at the cocoon, temporarily leaving them unguarded.

"Bandit, use headbutt on the left one then tail whipe the other one! Silcoon... harden. Repeat." Bandit immediately dove into action, ramming one poocyena with his powerful(ish) headbutt attack. Luckily, that pooch flinched, leaving Bandit open to whack the other dog with his tail. Silcoon merely glowed green many times. "Okay Bandit, now use Headbutt on the right one! Silcoon... harden again." As the cocoon continued to harden, Bandit attacked the weaker puppy, getting a large amount of it's energy to deplete.

Suddenly, the one that had apparently flinched used tail whip on Bandit. He was now weaker. Tori was suddenly struck with an idea. "Bandit, use growl so your slight weakness won't matter, then use tail whip on the left one!" She commanded, and the silcoon promptly hardened... again.

And so the stats were evened, and then lowered for Team Tori's gain. Both poochyena now had low defence. Silcoon continued to harden.

Both poochyena used howl, and Tori cursed. These must be at a really high level, but she didn't want one. Poochyena were too weirdly personalitied for her taste. She knew that normally these poochyena would have run away by now, but seeings they were a higher level than Bandit they would stay and fight.

"Quick, Bandit! Use headbutt on both of them before they can attack! Silcoon... harden..." Bandit rushed forwards with ugency, and headbutted the two dogs who were too busy howling to notice his approach. They were briefly stunned, and Bandit took that time to tail whip them then retreat back to Silcoon.

The dogs had gotten up, and were preparing to both use tackle... Tori saw this.

"Bandit, they're about to use tackle! Get behind Silcoon at the last minute!" Tori yelled frantically. Bandit stood waiting... and waiting... and when the wolfy pokemon were within a meter of him... Bandit scampered behind the now rock hard Silcoon. The poochyena changed direction, snarling in fury. All they ended up doing was crashing into Silcoon, who wasn't harmed very much at all due to her multi hardened body.

Bandit took advantage of the Poochyena's confusion, to headbutt one, and tackle the other. They both fell unconcious, X marking on their eyes. Tori stared at the dogs for a second, and refrained herself from cheering.

"Well done, both of you," Tori praised, and saw that silcoon had flashed white. She was now level 8. "Silcoon, return." Tori waited for the bug to disappear before talking seriously to Bandit. "You did brilliantly, Bandit. But this place obviously has very strong pokemon and I doubt you can handle too many of them without a pokemon center nearby. We need to hurry, and try not to make too much noise,"

Bandit nodded and let out an exasperated sigh. He didn't like to admit it, but he knew that too many more strong pokemon like that and he would be beaten. He wanted that Silcoon to evolve quickly so they'd have a better chance against the local pokemon in this out of bounds forest. People were not supposed to come here, because the pokemon were beyond the power level of pokemon that the local newbies had. Tori had put being discreet before safety, and that wasn't very smart.

-------

The air was getting clearer, less musty and damp. There was also more light, and so the travellers assumed that this was somewhere near the edge of the ThickForest. Bandit suddenly made a sharp barking noise, and nudged Tori's leg.

"What is it, pal?" She asked, watching his every movement. Bandit rustled around in the grass, and deposited a small blue-gray disk in Tori's hand. "This is a TM! You found it on the floor? Wow, lucky. Oh wait, your ability is pickup. But still, why would there be a TM here?" Tori considered.

It suddenly hit her that only more experienced trainers were supposed to come here, and that more experienced trainers were likely to have TMs.

"Huh, well done Bandit. Let's see what this one is and if you can learn it," Tori congradulated, and slipped the disk into a slot in the pokedex. She read the information/.

Water pulse. A powerful water attack that may confuse the foe. This would be very useful against Roxanne, and even better, Bandit could learn it!

"What do you think, Bandit? Want to make a contribution to the first Gym battle we'll have?" Tori asked slyly. The grin that Bandit returned said it all. Okay then. Tori quickly taught it to Bandit, who was left looking quite happy. "Anyways, let's get out of here!" Tori suggested, then ran at the opening in the trees with her starter hot on her heels.

Tori was actually whooping as she broke out of the trees and into some long grass. And guess what she stepped on? A wurmple. The bug was fainted easily, it was nothing compared to the recent competition. However, it also lacked in the experience area. How boring. But anyway, Petalburg was literally in front of her, so that helped. Tori walked on, Bandit following her, peering at the city curiously.

Bandit eventually decided he wanted to see things from a higher vantage point and leapt onto Tori's shoulder, balancing there quite admirably for a four legged pokemon who was meant to stay on those legs. There was plenty of room on the shoulder for him, and it distinctly reminded Tori of that pokemon master Ash and his pikachu. Tori just ended up walking into the pokemon center smiling. She handed the Silcoon's pokeball over to the Nurse Joy, along with Bandit still outside his pokeball.

Tori sat thoughtfully on a chair while the pokeball was put on a machine and a strange wire thing coming from the machine was attatched to Bandit's forehead. He looked considerably fresher when the wire was removed, and jumped a clean three meters onto Tori's shoulder, who was personally quite impressed. She walked over with the furry scarf on her shoulder, and gratefuly collected the pokeball from the Nurse. Tori walked briskly out of the pokemon center and decided to go look for somewhere to buy food and maybe some pokemon supplies.

One of her objectives seemed liable to be achieved when a bright banner in the Pokemart's window caught her eye. 'SALE' it shouted, and Tori grinned approvingly.

"Sale huh? That helps." With a large grin still on, she walked in and began browsing. Tori happily zipped around looking for needed things, and ended up grabbing two potions, and was about to buy them when she saw an odd device made from metallic silver metal on a shelf with many others of the same sort of thing. It's packet read 'Translator'. Looking more closely, she saw smaller writing on the packet. 'Pokemon are easily brilliant friends, but it's hard to understand what in Lugia's name they're saying. This miraculous device has the languages of every recorded pokemon on it, and it translates those languages so the human ear hears english.'

"Wow, that's pretty handy. I have to get one of those!" Exclaimed Tori, wasting no time in grabbing one and examining the earpiece approvingly. When she finally got round to buying it... well...

"$2000 please. " Said the clerk. That was every bit of money she had nicked from her fosters! Well, she still had the money in her purse to buy food with... so why not? Tori handed the money over and left before the clerk could even thank her.

Tori sat on a bench and got out the Translator, and quickly put the device a good few centimeters away from her left ear as the packet instructed, and switched it on. She decided to try it out.

"So, Bandit. Smell any food shops around here?" Tori asked her pokemon casually. Bandit blinked and sniffed.

"There's a store due northeast. That's what I can smell: cold food and fruit." He replied. Tori was highly delighted with her translator. "Does that thingy actually let you understand me?" He asked inquiringly.

"Yes, it does. C'mon now, let's go get some food. I'm hungry." Tori then held out her arm for Bandit to run up, and once he was seated she grabbed her bag and walked confidently northeast. She stopped dead when she was confronted by a small fruit-and-veg store, and happily walked in. Bandit didn't seem at all fussed that there were so many fruits around, he probably had another berry hidden somewhere.

Tori set her eye on a large apple and got out her purse, then inspected the contents. She gaped disbelievingly, there was less than one dollar in there. Tori's stomach rumbled loudly, reminding her of the hunger she possessed and with dispair she knew she couldn't buy anything. But maybe... Tori whispered quietly to the pokemon on her shoulder.

"I don't have enough money to buy this, but we could always... borrow that apple, sort of permenantly," Tori whispered, then with shifty eyes seized the apple and pocketed it. Unfortunately, none other than the shop owner caught her red handed.

"Hmmm," He murmered suspiciously, and watched her closely. Tori eeped and tried to disappear down the next aisle, and then seemed to have lost him. She sighed with relief, and slipped out of another door. "HEY! COME BACK AND PAY FOR THAT!" Roared the shopkeeper from inside the shop. Tori eeped very loudly and instinctively legged it, a strange exhiliration rushing through her body.

"It's only one apple!" Tori yelled desperately, and then eeped yet again when she saw that the shopkeeper had released a growlithe, that was running quickly towards her. Tori cursed under her breath. "Bandit, Water pulse!" Tori commanded quietly to the pokemon on her shoulder. He quickly spat a jet of water rippling with rings of internal light, and it hit the unsuspecting growlithe dead on. The dog fainted, leaving Tori free to run out of town and into Petalburg forest.

Well, there's the introduction of the darkness. REVIEW!

Chapter 5: The dimming light

If you don't like dark fics, turn back now. ฑำฟสสัม ยสำฟหำ กนใ

Tori and Bandit only stopped once they were well into Petalburg woods. Tori was strongly against going into the ThichWood part of this place, it looked far too forboding. Instead, Tori picked a delicate path through the tall grass, being careful not to be seen. She was immersed in thoughts, and Bandit was curious as to why she hadn't said anything.

Tori was surprised, and shocked. She had stolen the apple that would keep her alive for the time being. It was just an apple, but stealing it had given her an exhiliration very similar to the one found in battling. But this came from... well, she supposed it came from getting the better of whoever owned the object, to obtain something that she wasn't allowed or supposed to have. It gave her a sense of freedom like nothing else did, because if she could steal an apple without too much conflict, what else was she capable of with a little planning?

But really, there was nothing or no-one around to nick food from around here, so she'd have to rely on her own senses and Bandit's to find food. She supposed she should save the large apple until she really needed it. Tori needed a rest, and collapsed on a soft bit of long grass. Bandit immediately stopped beside her, his large eyes gazing questioningly at her.

"Don't worry Bandit, I just need to rest." Tori murmured.

"Right. You carry on believing that," Bandit replied dubiously, sensing that something other than fatigue ailed her. This became more apparent as Tori got up and started travelling again after hardly resting at all. Bandit didn't question her, instead he presented a super potion he had found lying around/

"That ability of yours really is handy," Commented Tori, but her voice still held that tone of deep thought. Bandit tried to act normally, and even tried to make noise to attract enemy pokemon, hoping to take Tori's mind off whatever it was thinking about. In the end, he caught the attention of a wurmple and a shroomish. Tori blinked. "A double battle then? That helps, experience for Silcoon. Now... what level are they...?" Tori murmured, checking her pokedex. She gave a yelp of surprise.

"Great Groudon! These pokemon are level 14! Well... The shroomish is. The Wurmple is level 10. I wonder why it hasn't evolved yet? Hmm. Well, anyway, go Silcoon!" Tori announced, realesing the cocoon in a beam of red light. "Silcoon, harden. Keep doing that 'cause it's your only move," Silcoon looked exasperated, then fired a Poison sting at the shroomish.

"Oh, that helps. But use harden anyway, then use Poison sting on the shroomish. Bandit, use headbutt then water pulse on the Wurmple!" Tori ordered, blinking. Bandit obediently rammed the unsuspecting worm with his head, and in return the Wurmple wrapped all of him up in silk apart from his head. Fortunately, this meant he could still use water pulse. Bandit opened his mouth and sent a jet of water pulsing with ultrasonic waves. The attack hit dead on, and the unprepared Wurmple was confused.

Meanwhile, Silcoon had barely finished hardening when the shroomish caught her of guard, using absorb. The odd little pokemon now had more energy. Silcoon fired a poison sting almost robotically at the shroomish in defence, and suddenly Tori noticed that the shroomish would probably win if Bandit didn't help.

"Erm... Bandit, use... tail whip on the shroomish! Use poison sting Silcoon, repeat!" Bandit loped away from the wurmple who was wrapping itself up with it's own silk, and distracted the shroomish from it's tackle attack by thrashing his spiky tail all over it's face, causing the shroomish to close it's eyes and fall over trying to get the tail away.

Unfortunately, Silcoon fired at the wrong moment and got Bandit as well as the enemy, and Bandit staggered while the shroomish fainted. Silcoon got slightly brighter, but nothing more. The wurmple had got over it's confusion and was now rolling around on the earth, completely snared with its own silk. Tori peered at bandit to make sure he hadn't been poisoned or anything. He hadn't, so Tori pointed at the wurmple.

"Bandit, use headbutt. Silcoon, use poison sting." Tori was getting a bit sleepy now, so she wanted the battle over with quickly. Fortunately, all that was needed to fell the bug was Bandit's attack, and the poison stings made small and harmless marks in the ground. As thw wurmple's eyes assumed the X look, Silcoon began to glow...

"Tori, I think you may want to look at this," Bandit urged, and Tori stopped cheering and observed Silcoon's evolution with wide eyes. Glowing white wings spread from her, and the shape of two antennae appeared... The body shape thinned, and the light disappeared. In the fairly ugly sicoon's place was a large and vibrant Beautifly. Tori gaped, her mouth hanging open quite dumbly.

"Are you just going to stand there gawping all day? Can I have a name? Beautifly is a boring one. Do you know if there are any fruit trees around here... or flowers?" Beautifly kept on asking questions, and Bandit eventually started growling to shut her up.

"Um... yes... you can have a name. Hmmmm..." Tori started thinking of a name.

"Er... Tori? How about Brightwing?" Bandit suggested. Tori looked from the butterfly to raccoon, then grinned.

"It suits you, d'you want it?" Tori asked.

"Why not? I mean, my wings are bright aren't they? So it makes sense to name me after them doesn't it? Did you have that in mind when you thought of it Bandit? 'Cause it seems so, doesn't it?" Yet again, Brightwing started bombarding them with questions.

"Umm, yes. that's great. Return." Tori announced, and brandished the bug's pokeball and returned her in a flash of red light.

"Hey! Are you a pokemon trainer? Oh, I guess you are, since you've got a zigzagoon by your side. Want a battle?" Asked a random boy who appeared out of no-where. Tori stared at him. He had appeared out of nowhere.

Should she battle him? It should be okay... since she had two able pokemon. Weakened, but still fighting fit. Besides, you got a money prize when you won. "Okay then, I accept. Go, Brightwing!" Tori declared, sending out her pokemon. The other person grinned.

"Go, Noctowl!"

Crud. Flying/Psychic type... major disadvantage... double crud... Oh well.

"That doesn't help. Hmph. Brightwing, use Poison sting, repeat!" And so the little butterfly launched the poisonous pins at the noctowl, who bore the darts painfully.

"Get out of their range, fly!" Shouted the other trainer. The noctowl immediately took wing, and the darts failed to hit.

"Umm... Oh wait! Brightwing, use gust!" And the butterfly loosed a large vortex of wind, which hit super effectively since noctowl was flying. The pokemon returned to the ground without attacking the bug. then came the unexpected move.

"Noctowl, wing attack then confusion!"

The attack was quick, well alunched, and unexpected. Brightwing could not take both of those attacks... she was down.

"Oh, crap." Muttered Tori, returning her pokemon. "Go Bandit! Use water pulse then headbutt!" Even as the red light formed into a shape Bandit was already preparing to launch his attacks. The water jet filled with ultrasonic waves did a large amount of damage, and it was the headbutt that finished the unsuspecting Noctowl.

"That zigzagoon is pretty good. But it can't beat this! Go!"

And a Hypno formaed in red light.

That fight was over before it even began, the hypno beat Bandit with three well aimed attacks.

"YES! We rule! Now, I believe you owe me your forfeit now?" The trainer cheered. Tori gulped.

She had no money to pay him.

Before the guy could do anything, Tori fled into the undergrowth, the more leafy and overgrown area that was close to the path. The trainer was obviously too startled to come after her.

This stinks. Now I have no pokemon for the rest of the forest.

Another crime to Tori's name!

Chapter 6: Burning fur and night breeze

And it begins again.

Tori didn't know how long she ran for... but she ran until it felt like every step would rip her limbs apart. Her legs were burning, and it didn't help when she tripped over something small, warm, and furry.

"Dour!" Barked something angrily, yet wearily. Tori looked round to see a small doggish pokemon on the ground, it had bone coloured ridges on it's back. "Dour! Houndour!" Tori turned her translator on.

"Stay away, human!" The houndour snarled. Tori glanced worriedly at it, it's fur was matted with congealed blood, and there were whiplash scars all over it's body. Some were fresh. The houndour seemed too weak to move.

"Don't worry, Houndour. I won't hurt you... it wasn't me who put those scars there." Tori whispered gently, trying to keep the anger from her tone. She had heard about those people - people that whipped their pokemon so much, trying to beat them to the point where they didn't feel pain. If that pokemon lost a fight, it was frowned upon as useless and abandoned.

"You may not have been... him, but you are a human. All you want is to flash me around like a trophy, then leave me to die when I lose." It growled.

"I am a human, that's true. But just like there are bad pokemon that attack and half kill pokemon for fun, there are bad humans that abuse pokemon the the point of death. But just like there are good pokemon, there are good humans." Tori tried, and started to take a potion from her bag. "Let me heal you..." No sooner than she had held the potion spray close enough for it to work on the dog, the Houndour weakly bit her hand.

Tori recoiled, and took her hand back. It was bleeding, and it hurt like hell... but this pokemon was bleeding more, and would probably bleed until it died. She put out her hand again, much to the Houndour's surprise. This time she managed to spray the potion on it's wounds, and the flesh leapt miraculously back together.

It seemed highly suspicious, and was eying Tori's hand as if wondering wether it should bite or not. Eventually, it got to it's feet shakily, growled, then bounded off into the forest.

Tori watched it go, then decided to test a theory by releasing Bandit. He was completely knocked out, with his eyes all swirly. Tori looked curiously at the pokemon, then used the reaminder of the potion on him.

Bandit squealed, then his eyes opened. He looked very weak, but he was actually moving.

"What did I miss?" Bandit asked demandingly. Tori sprayed another potion on him while telling the raccoon of the passing events. "A Houndour? I wonder where he sprang from." Bandit mused.

"'He'?" Tori inquired.

"Oh yeah, I forgot. Humans have terrible noses. The scent basically says it's a male dog pokemon, it smells of burning fur and the night air so it has to be a fire/dark type. Us pokemon can smell things like that easily," Bandit told her, wih the faintest hint of vanity in his voice.

"We'd better get a move on. There's no knowing how far we are from Rustboro." Tori announced, but Bandit could pick up that false note in her voice again... that distracted, unsure tone...

"It's hardly twenty meters away. I can smell humans." Bandit announced.

"Stop boasting about yor nose." Tori complained with mock irritation, and playfully shoved the little pokemon. Bandit managed to hop onto her shoulder just before Tori got up, holding her bag, ready to go.

Bandit was right, Rustboro was very close. And it was one huge place, probably had a lot of shops...

Bandit noticed her lack of concentration on the waking world, and hpped onto the ground. He then unexpectedly dragged her by the trouser leg into a small group of lonely trees.

"What now?" Tori demanded.

"Tell me why you've been acting so weird since Petalburg." Bandit said, not using any particular demanding tone, it was more of a simple statement than anything else. Tori looked at him with a slightly confused expression, which was instantly announced fake by Bandit's natural, instinct of sensing how she really felt. "Don't try fooling me with expressions either." he added seriously. Tori gave an exasperated sigh.

"Okay! For the sake of Lugia... I have this weird joy whenever I steal, happy? Like with that insignificant apple, and the insignificant refusal to give my forfeit." Then Tori wordlessly exited the trees that Bandit had dragged her into, and it took Bandit a few seconds to get his bearings before bounding after her. "But today I'm gonna win a gym battle and get prize money. Then maybe I won't have to steal." Tori then began looking around, as if she were looking for the gym.

"Don't you think we need more training first?" Bandit quiried. "I'm level 11, and Brightwind is level 10. I heard Roxanne had a level 16 Nosepass. I stepped on one once, it took me weeks to recover from the battering it gave me." Bandit shuddered at this. Tori had stopped listening, she was staring at an advertisement on a noticeboard.

A new pokemon safari zone had opened up north of Rustboro! It contains many exciting and exotic breeds of pokemon relocated from Kanto and Jhoto, so you can catch pokemon here that you can't in Hoenn! All of the pokemon are fairly weak, none of them over level 15. The level of pokemon is carefully checked to make sure their levels may not be too much for the level of pokemon rookie trainers reaching Rustboro may have. Entrance fee is $500, so come and pay the tiny price and catch 'em all!

"The ending phrase is a bit too classic for a good advertisement, but this seems like a brilliant oppourtunity to me. Why not get some new pokemon?" Tori remarked.

"But you have no money." Bandit reminded. Tori's expression didn't change. She had known that.

"We'll sneak into the safari zone and camp out there. I want to see whether this triggers that joy of stealing or not." Tori replied, and looked closely at the map on the leaflet that showed where to find the zone. "Come on!" Tori then pulled a startled Bandit off the ground and onto her shoulder, and she walked ahppily down the path to the safari zone.

Anyone guess what kind of pokemon she'll catch in there? REVIEW!

Chapter 7: Author's note

Author's note. No this story IS NOT being discontinued. I'm going on holiday (Vacation) for four weeks. It will be internetless. This means There will be no updates for any of my stories for four weeks AT THE LEAST. Sorry about that!

Chapter 8: Rising phoenix

Tori saw that one rather stupid kid was trying to get into the zone without paying, and making a very clear spectacle of it. He was immediately lectured by a watching Jenny.

Tori simply surveyed the surroundings of the fence, looking for a suitable place to get in. She eventually found it, a place shaded ad hidden by trees on the inside and outside of the fence. She walked casually over to it, not wanting to attract attention, and climbed a tree. Once at a branch higher than the fence, she jumped unevenly over it and clung to the trunk of another tree in the park.

Well, slammed into it would have been a more accurate description. You could say that Tori may have had a rather sore nose for a while after that, but it didn't matter. Not anything. Not while that feeling of exhiliration and triumph was running through her in a dark sort of way.

It seemed that the exhiliration came from doing things that people said she wasn't allowed to, getting the better of them and setting her own boundaries. She could do what she wanted, because if she were a criminal there would be no laws to hold her back...

Whoa! Where the heck was that going?! She jumped over a fence to save a pay, and she ended up thinking she was a criminal because of it? Well... she sort of was. Since she had broken the law slightly... but it still didn't count in her mind as a real criminal act... like stealing repeatedly or nicking a pokemon.

Tori's thoughts were inturruped by Bandit taking another chance to show off his nose.

"I can smell feathers! there's a bird approaching-" Bandit was cut off as a blurr of brown feathers slammed into him, knocking him onto a tree. It rose a little higher, then slowed down to reveal a pidgeotto, and it's feathers were more orangey than brown, which was unusual. she supposed it was some kind of pigment mutation.

"Right, Bandit, water pulse!" The dizzying water smashed into the unsuspecting pidgeotto, and she was sent back a good few meters. Bandit decided to use water pulse again, but this time it missed as the pokemon climbed in the air to avoid it. With a screech, the odd coloured pidgeotto suddenly clamped her wings to her side and dropped like an arrow to the pokemon below. Since the people visiting were only allowed to use Safari Balls and no pokemon, it was easy to tell why no-one had caught this pokemon yet.

An idea suddenly struck Tori. "Bandit, dodge and return!" Bandit looked puzzled but willingly jumped out of the dive-bomb's range, then returned to Tori's side as she released the other pokemon. Brightwing appeared and immediately began asking questions.

"Hi. Why am I out? What am I supposed to be doing? What am I fighting? Am I fighting that?" She asked, indicating the ludicrous looking bird.

"Yes, you are. Now quick, use poison sting!" Tori replied, and soon there was a fleet of sharp pin like objects embedding themselves in the bird, which promptly fell off after a few seconds of being there. The pidgeotto screeched angrily, but there was a weaker undercurrent to her cries now, she was poisoned.

Unexpectedly, two small tornados formed on each side of Brightwing, on account of the attack the pidgeotto was expertly using. They slammed into Brightwing, causing a impact far greater than Tori had expected. She had been too wrapped up in her idea of getting the bird poisoned to remember the type disadvantage, and she watched in dismay as Brightwing went out, and returned her.

At that very same moment, the attacker fell from the air, wincing as poison leeched her strength. Tori had poisoned her, but as a wild pokemon, if this bird was not captured after she was defeated... then she would die from the poison. She would perish slowly and painfully, and Tori threw the pokeball quickly to prevent that.

The pidgeotto was hers, and Tori healed the unconcious bird of its poisoning. She suddenly heard faint voices, and quickly returned the bird and ran swifly off with Bandit on her shoulder.

When there was no-one in range of sight or hearing, (or smell) Tori released the pidgeotto. It looked at her with a steely glint in its eyes.

"So, you succeeded in my capture." The unmistakibly feminine creature smirked. "You are better tan I expected. This will be an interesting journey."

"So... are you happy to come with us?" She asked.

"There are none here strong enough to match my skill. I seek challenge." She answered. "Power too great for my form came with my colouring, and I evolved prematurely. I think I will be a good addition to your team."

"I dare say you will. Do you have a name?" Tori asked.

"For my colouring and power, I am known as Phoenix." Came the reply.

"Good name. Anyway, let's get out of here, I want to challenge the gym!"

And so they did. Tori exited the zone as discreetly as she had entered it.

Chapter 9: Settling darkness

Tori walked across the town and into the pokemon center, and made quick use of its healing facilities. She was about to leave for the gym when her stomach complained loudly. Tori grinned sheepishly.

"I suppose I should eat..." Tori said to Bandit.

"Might I suggest you notice I need food too?" Bandit demanded.

"Might I point out we have no money with which to buy food, so it seems we'll have to fight the Gym empty-stomached." Tori sighed. Bandit grumbled under his breath. Tori then exited the Pokemon center and headed straight for the clearly visible gym. Tori stopped before the door, took a deep breath, and pushed aside the door. She walked to a counter to register herself.

"Name and age." Said the attendant, with a clear monotonous tone.

"Tori aged ten and a half." Replied Tori, who had an interesting fluttery sensation within her stomach. the attendant wrote it down.

"Wait on the bench until the current battle has ended and the five minute interval between that match and yours has passed." Sighed the bored looking woman. She was probably only doing this job because it was the only one on offer. Tori obediently flopped down on the bench, trying to vanquish the fluttering of her insides, then noticed there was a small television showing the battle. She was surprised to see Dan there, battling with his treecko against a tired looking geodude. She watched with interest as the treecko leapt above the rock pokemon, and flipped multiple times in a down ward direction. Suddenly, the strong tail of the gecko slammed against the oddly rocklike pokemon, and it fell to the ground.

The next pokemon Roxanne sent out was nosepass. The treecko feinted, jumped, rolled, ducked... avoiding every clumsy strike the nosepass dealt. Dan had raised it to a high level. Every now and then the treecko would jump on the nosepass and rest there, then jump off the considerably weaker rock pokemon. She assumed it was Absorb. The nosepass soon fell, and Dan was awarded his badge and prize money. He walked out an exit separate to the entrance of the arena. Roxanne had her own door, supposedly into a recovery room.

Tori let all the strategies she had devised run through her head, deciding the best one for each circumstance likely to occur. She was hoping to have a double battle, her most effective attack formations were with double battles. The attendant called to her.

"Will Tori please enter the arena for her gym battle."

Tori quickly got up, Bandit jumped onto her shoulder just in time. She nervously walked towards the arena door, opened it, then walked in.

She was immediately greeted by the shouts of a large crowd. She didn't know there would be spectators! Argh... oh well. She hoped it wouldn't affect how well her pokemon heard her commands. Tori walked silently forward into the trainer's box. Roxanne stood in her box, a confident smile on her face, her eyes betraying no sign of fear.

"You can choose the rules, if you wan." called the gym leader. Tori smiled, she'd hoped it would happen like that.

"okay then, how about two on two - double battle?" Tori asked. Roxanne nodded, and the commentator repeated the agreement.

"This will be a two on two double battle between leader Roxanne and challenger Tori. No time limit. Let the match begin!"

"Geodude! Nosepass! I choose you!" Roxanne yelled, releasing the two.

"Brightwing, Bandit, go!" Tori announced, saying it loudly but not yelling like trainers usually did. Bandit jumped from her shoulder and into the arena, then Brightwing appeared in blood-red light which withdrew back into the pokeball.

"So it's Roxanne's geodude and nosepass vs. Tori's zigzagoon and beautifly!" Declared the announcer through his microphone.

Tori noticed Roxanne looked slightly unsure. Maybe she wasn't very used to double battles? "Geodude, tackle the beautifly! Nosepass, harden!" Roxanne commanded.

"Bandit, use tail whip on the Nosepass! Brightwing, dodge the attack then use absorb!" Tori ordered, and the battle began. The nosepass glowed green, then cried out its name as its raised defence lessened as Bandit thrashed it with his tail. the geodude threw itself at Brightwing, who neatly zoomed upwards and giggled as the heavy rock pokemon missed her. She then flew gown and sat on the geodude, and she pulsed a faint white as the geodude's energy was stolen. The geodude made to whack her, but Brightwing fluttered upwards, signalling the end of her attack.

The commentator shouted about what had just happened, while the next commands were told.

"Nosepass, Tackle the zigzagoon! Geodude, you tackle him too!" Roxanne yelled, and Tori quickly decided what to do.

"Attack formation B!" She declared. the two pokemon stopped for a brief second, going through the attack in their minds. Then Brightwing dove at Bandit from the altitude at which she had been resting, then she glided along the ground beside the raccoon.

"What's this? Challenger Tori seems to have a strategy up her sleeves!" Announced the commentator.

Bandit leapt onto the back of Brightwing just before she flew sharply upwards, the attacks of the rock pokemon missing them by an inch. When the duo were about six meters above the competition, Brightwing looped-the-loop, and Bandit began falling with his little legs spread out. Then ultrasonic waves of water flew from his mouth, drenching both rocks and stunning them for a second. Brightwing flew down and Bandit landed on her back, and then the butterfly used poison sting, sending the venomous spines towards the weak and drenched enemies.

Then the attack was over. Bandit made a mighty leap off of Brightwing's back and ran to the other side of the arena, Brightwing followed.

The two pokemon and the two trainers observed the damage. The nosepass was poisoned and confused. The geodude was poisoned. In its confusion, the nosepass attacked the geodude which looked on the point of defeat. The nosepass began attacking the wall as the geodude fainted from poison, and was returned. A second later the nosepass fainted too.

The crowd boomed their approval. Tori found it quite annoying. Couldn't they cheer quietly? She returned Brightwing after thanking both the pokemon for a spectacular performance. Then she walked over to Roxanne for her prizes. The badge sparkled as much as a grey badge could, Tori liked it. But no sooner than she had received the $600 prize money, Bandit alerted her of trouble.

"Tori! Your foster parents are approaching, as well as middle aged women with growlithes!" Bandit whispered urgently into her ear. Tori's eyes flew open. Jennys. They somehow found out I'm here...

"Erma, thanks. I really need to run..." And without hesitation, that was exactly what Tori did. She ran out of the gym and towards the tunnel northeast of Rustburg, the best place she could hide. She stopped for breath for a few seconds under the shade of the first tree, then carried on running. She released Brightwing, who flew swiftly to keep up with Tori. "Fly back, and see how far away the pursuers are. Don't let them see you!" Tori whispered to the bug, who nodded and flitted off, back the way Tori had just come.

The butterfly was back very quickly. "You can't outrun them, Tori! They're almost surrounding you! We'll have to fight." Brightwing announced, and Tori's stomach lurched.

"Alright." She whispered, then scrambled up to a low, strong branch of a nearby tree. She heard a yell and looked round to see a poisonous spine in a jenny's arm. She was obviously poisoned. "What did you do that for?! Now they'll battle us and arrest us!" Tori whispered angrily to Brightwing.

"But you said to fight-"

"I didn't give any commands!" Tori sighed. "Oh well, can't be changed. we'd better prepare for one heck of a fight!" Tori listened attentively to the Jennys.

"I'm sorry madam, but the girl has attacked a Jenny, she has to be arrested!" announced a Jenny, and the night was then alive with the barks of growlithes smelling her out. Tori silently released Phoenix, who landed on a branch and looked questioningly at the large amount of opponents below.

"They're police trying to arrest us. we need to get away - we can't beat them all!" Tori announced quietly. Phoenix gave a wild laugh and rose into the sky.

"here I was thinking I would be raised by some rule-abiding goody-goody! This will be more fun than I thought." Phoenix announced. With a grim realisation, Tori knew she was a fugitive from the law now. She couldn't participate in gym battles for fear of police. She could battle trainers only sparingly because wanted posters would be up. The only life left for her was that of a criminal - stealing to survive. Tori realised that this didn't really bother her. In fact, it filled her with a wild, rebellious feeling of exhilaration. Her new life would suit her well.

"Phoenix, Brightwing, use a combined gust attack on those two growlithe nearest to that tree over there!" Tori whispered to the pokemon, pointing at the tree. "and Bandit, you use water pulse on the whole clearing, I want to wash away our scent." It struck Tori she was already devising crafty ways to escape. The orders were quickly carried out. A huge gust attack stirred up a dust cloud over the entire clearing, the attack giving huge damage to its target and Bandit's water pulse attack working unseen. "Bandit, is there an exit open yet?"

Bandit's amazing nose quickly assessed. "No." He replied. Tori cursed silently.

"Brightwing, poison sting whatever you can out of the enemies. Phoenix, wing attack those growlithe you just gusted." Tori instructed, only within hearing rang of her pokemon. "Bandit, attack that group of growlithe there with water pulse."

Soon, there was a great many fainted growlithe. Some poisoned, some confused, some of the Jennys shared these status problems. Tori watched a Jenny stumble into trees with a chuckle. Suddenly, Bandit stumbled and fell out of the tree, managing to land correctly. Tori watched in horror as a huge number of fiery sparks (ember) flew towards him.

A flamethrower attack blasted through the air and collided with the embers, which disappeared along with the flamethrower. Tori saw a houndour leap up beside her in the branches, she recognised the one she had healed before.

"Well?" he growled. "What are you waiting for? Whip up some dust and escape." Tori stared for a moment, then regained her senses.

"Brightwing, Phoenix, use gust on a dusty part of the floor!" Tori ordered, and waited for the wind to hit the ground. A huge dust storm erupted in the clearing, impossible to see through. all the Jennys and pokemon were closing their eyes as the dust entered them. Tori jumped out of the tree and ran into the cave connecting Rustboro and Verdanturf, four pokemon behind her.

Chapter 10: Loss

Tori only stopped running when she found a small crevice to hide in, somewhere in the middle of Rusturf tunnel. She saw a Jenny come in with a torch, and shine it around, bu she saw nothing, and all the growlithe were out cold. They could'nt find her now. The Jenny exited the tunnel, and Tori emerged from her crevice. The pokemon emerged from their own hiding places.

"Thanks," She said to the houndour, who was still there.

"No problem. I owed you." he replied. "When you healed me, I couldn't understand it. All I knew were humans that whipped you for losing. So I followed you and watched you. You are good to your pokemon. I happen to not be native to this region, so i;ll have hordes of trainers after me. I'd rther not take the chance that one of them might be cruel. Want another pokemon?"

"Are you kidding? of course you can come! hey, Bandit, you picked up anything eidible?" Tori asked the raccoon. He threw her a cheri berry. "Hungry? She asked, offering it to the houndour, who gladly devoured it.

"Better than the rotten ones i've had to eat." he evaluated.

"Hey. I'm Bandit, glad to have you on the team." Bandit told the houndour. The other two pokemon perched on nearby rocks.

"I'm Brightwing." The butterfly informed simply. She was obviously not too comfy around a pokemon that could brn he to ashes.

"And I am Phoenix. I predict you should like Tori, she is amusing. Instead of some goody-goody we get a outlaw, if anything that makes it worth going with her." Phoenix laughed. The houndour gave a snort of laughter.

"My old human wasn't exactly law abiding, but this one is kind. You're right, the challenges that follow an outlaw should be huge fun. When I was in a pack, my name was Nightshade. Since you all have names, I think i'll reclaim it."

"Glad to have you, Nightshade. I think for now you should al stay out of your pokeballs, in case we get any unexpected company. This tunnel is quite big, we can't know what to expect." Tori announced, and without any words they set off down the dimly lit tunnel, and it was about half an hour before they reached two large rocks that came up to Tori's waist blocking the road.

"What I don't get is why people don't just climb over it." Tori said jokingly, and scrambled over the rock. The others either jumped or flew over it to join her.

"Tori, I hear voices." Phoenix warned, and immediately Tori froze, sliding into the shadows. They all hid, apart from Brightwing.

"-I don't see why the boss didn't let us carry on tailing the twerps." Complained one, a woman.

"Neither do I, Jessie. he should have sent Cassidy and Hutch to look for the unnative pokemon. What do you think it is, anyway?" Replied another, a male.

"I don't know!" Proteted an oddly accented person.

"I didn't ask you, meowth." Snapped the male.

"James asked me." Jessie confirmed. Tori peeked round, and saw a meowth and two people. They wore white shirts with red Rs on them.

"The rockets?!" Tori whispered.

"Anyway, I have no clue what that darn pokemon might be. But I guess it's a good one, most of the ones in this region are. I think the boss was smart, moving to this region. No one apart form that stupid team Apocalypse knows we moved." Jessie sighed.

"Yeah - hey, what's that?" Asked james, pointing. Tori cursed when she saw that Brightwing had shown herself. "So it's a beautifly. C'mon, send out seviper. We should test that TM the boss gave us, he said it'd have unexpected suprises."

"Crud!" Tori cursed. "Brightwing, gust!" She ordered, only just loud enough for the bug to hear. In return she whipped up a wind almost strong enough to blow the rockets away.

"Go seviper!" Jessie ordered. "Use toxic!"

"Toxic?! Are they mad?!" Tori whispered. "Brightwing, you have to dodge that!" Tori announced, again, only loud enough for her pokemon to hear. Brightwing tensed, preparing to dodge. However, they were both surprised by the gush of purple liquid that was spat towards Brightwing, reaching too far to dodge. Tori swore frantically under her breath. "Brightwing, come here!" Tori whispered loudly, but the butterfly could barely move.

"It poisons the opponent? Drat! We don't have an antidote! We wouldn't get it to HQ in time! I think it's time to blast off, Jessie." James cursed. Suddenly, there was a roar, and something huge and heavy crashed into the seviper.

"Lair!" It yelled, rousing up a torrent of whismur that attacked the rockets with it, giving Brightwing enough time to flutter weakly back to Tori.

"A lairon! We're not nearly strong enough to fight that yet..." Tori whispered, getting a towel from her bag and wrapping the butterfly in it. "Oh, Brightwing..."

Suddenly, three more people entered the scene. They wore black shirts with a large white A on them, their trousers were black with white zigzags at the bottom. They all wore black bandanas which had a white arrow pointing upwards in the middle, and they carried some sort of phone thing.

"Back off, team rocket. We'll be taking that lairon." one of them announced.

"team Apocalypse?!" meowth hissed. They nodded, and the one with the phone thing that had a long aerial whipped it around in circles, emmiting white rings that surrounded the lairon. Soon, he stopped, and the lairon was calm. He then threw a pokeball at it, and the lairon was captured with no struggle. He released the pokemon, which promptly glared at team rocket.

"Lairon, take down them all!" He ordered, and the Rockets were sent bruise covered out the way Tori had come in. Tori barely saw it, because brightwing was badly poisoned and she had no antidote. It was a simple fact that Brightwing would die, poison sapping all energy from her, if she wasn't cured. Not many people fell foul of this fact, because most people carried antidotes. But Tori had used her antidote after catching Phoenix. Brightwing murmured something weakly, too quietly to be heard. Then she fainted.

Tori's pokemon gathered round Brightwing, murmuring anxiously. Phoenix, who was always straight and to the point, did not try to tell Brightwing that she would be alright. Truthfully, they all knew the bug would die soon. Phoenix perched on a rock, then sent a birdlike hiss in the direction of the way the rockets had fled. The Apocalypse members had gone the other way, down the tunnel which was all too long. Brightwing had no hope now, it was better for her life to fade surrounded by friends idding her farewell, rather than pass on with air beating her wings and her friends in their pokeballs.

The team watched solemnly, tearfully, as the light faded slowly from Brightwing's eyes, and even her wings seemed dimmer. Tori's eyes shot open as she watched the last spark of life fade from Brightwing's eyes, and the body fall at last completely limp. Tori opened her mouth to howl, but her voice failed her. Was brightwing really gone? Was this really the end of the cheeky pokemon?

Memories from their short time together hit Tori, more painful than an open wound. Brightwing bombarding her with questions. Brightwing pulling off the admirable stunt with Bandit in the gym. The wild glint fading from her eyes at last. Again, Tori tried to speak, and again, words failed her. Bandit crouched low.

"I took it for granted she'd always be there." he said softly, shutting his eyes tight as he remembered how once he had snapped at the butterfly. "Once, she smelt of silver wind and pollen, but now I can smell only death."

A red fire of rage lit Tori's eyes.

"Team rocket did this! From now on, whenever we meet Rockets, we shall not stop fighting until we have left our mark on them. As for the ones with the seviper, if they are ever unlucky enought to cross our path I will make sure that snake does not escape unscathed!" Tori said this in a voice unlike her usual determination put into words. This time, her voice burned with rage and hate, a ghostly glint of loss echoing through her eyes, anger contorting her face.

"Tori. We all feel the pain of brightwing's passing, but we must leave. Things cannot be dwelt on when danger may plague us yet." Phoenix told her gently, and Tori stood up. She took a pokeball from her bag, and closed her eyes with a sob when she looked at it. She sent out the red beam of light, which turned grey upon hitting the corpse which had once held life. The pokeball turned black as the grey light withdrew into it, and the button sealed, never to be opened again. Upon the black pokeball were etched the letters R.I.P.

"I guess that's what happens when the contents of a pokeball ceases to hold life." Tori said softly, and put the pokeball in her pocket. She wiped the forming tears from her eyes, then stood up, her eyes burning with new determination. "Anyway, this 'Team Apocalypse' seems to be an enemy of team Rocket. That sparks my interest. I say we go after those people, see who they are and what they're up to. Vote?"

All the pokemon decided it was the best action to take, and so the pokemon set on their way. After a brief invesitgation on her pokedex she discovered Nightshade was level 16, making him the strongest of her pokemon. Bandit and Phoenix were level 15. She left all of her pokemon out, because with all their sharp senses combined they would alert her to trouble before she could see it. Luckily, there was no trouble aside from a couple of whismur (which were quickly used as exp points). It took little over an hour before Tori could see the light of dawn outside the tunnel, and they were all so tired of the dim shadows that they ran to the exit.

Chapter 11: Into the shadows

The gang emerged in a dimly lit down in which the scents of flowers hung in the air. brightwing woul have loved it. But Brightwing was gone. Tori and her pokemon zipped quickly through the town, silence shrouding them. Tori was always shadowed by the uncomfortable feeling of insecurity, feeling that the jennys would appear any second. Thankfully, they god through the town quickly, only to see the telltale signs of a recent campfire, charred sticks and ash.

"Those Team Apocalypse people can't be far ahead. Phoienix, go and see wat you can learn. Make sure they don't find you." Tori ordered, and watched the bird fly obligingly off. Tori walked around collecting berries for a bit, until Phoenix returned. "Discover anything?" Tori asked her.

"They hate team Rocket beyond rivalry, no one knows why. Team Apocalypse is dedicated to world domination, like team Rocket. Like all the other teams, they recruited and grew in secret untl their numbers were big enough to let the world know they existed. Team Apocalypse plans an attack on the Verdanturf breeding centers to steal the baby pokemon, that will be their first open assault." Phoenix answered. "These agents are high rank grunts, they are returning to their hideout with the lairon."

"good." Tori sighed, sitting against a tree with a satisfied expression. "To be perfectly honest, I don't think I can feed all of us now that we're on the run. We hate team Rocket, but do not yet have the power to stand against them. We all love the criminal life, but have little experience or technique to make a living from it. Team Apocalypse can feed us, train us, and help us oppose our enemies. In return, we can help them on their road to greatness. What do you say? Do we join?" Tori asked.

"Definately." Answered Phoenix instantly.

"I go where you go, Tori." Bandit announced. "You could jump off a mountain and i'd still follow you. Literally."

"Us houndour are very loyal to our packs, and my pack is not of houndour. If the pack moves, no one is left behind. I wll stay with my pack, especially if it means eating well." Nightshade growled.

"And some people say pokemon are stupid." Tori laughed. "Come on, then. We've got a team to tail!"

And so, for the next three days Tori and co. followed the Apocalypse agents, through Mauville and then somewhere above it, behind the rocks, Tori could no longer see them. Fortunately, her sharp nosed pokemon detected them climbing up a large tree, which looked quite insignificant and invisible against the larger ones around it. Apparently, the grunts had stopped halfway up the tree and said something inaudible, before continuing to scale the tree and disappear from sight or smell. Tori recalled Nightshade, who could not climb.

Bandit rested on her shoulder while Tori used the numerous branches to climb the tree, and Phoenix followed her progress outside the leaves. Tori was surprised to find that some of the branches had been removed so there was practically a ladder that could hold even fat men on the tree. Tori stopped when she saw a large tangle of branches creating a hut, so disguised by paint and leaves that even Phoenix could not see it from outside.

"Who goes there?" Asked a voice. Tori assumed he said that to everyone that went this way, and that was what the Apocalypses had said.

"Is this Team Apocalypse? If so, I want to join the team."

Silence. More silence.

"This is Team Apocalypse. Enter for your job interview." Said the voice. Tori nervously pushed aside some large fern leaves to enter the hut. She suddenly noticed that this was a secret base, but team Apocalypse must be very small if their base was a tree! The man removed his face from a slit in the wall, and let his binoculars drop and hang with the string that was roped around his neck. He looked like he was in his early twenties, and was in the same uniform as the grunts had been. He had odd russet hair.

"Please take a seat." He told her, settling himself on a chair behind an office like desk. Tori placed herself on the chair opposite him on the other side of the desk. She watched as Phoenix flew into the base and sat on the shoulder that Bandit did not occupy. The Apocalypse released a healthy looking kirlia. "I will ask you some questions. If you lie, then the kirlia hear will detect it, and you will be forced to say the truth. If we find your answers to particular questions very unsatisfying then your memory of team Apocalypse will be blanked. Understood?"

"Understood." Tori replied, and Bandit shifted nervously on her shoulder.

"Okay. Your name?"

"Tori." She replied, no longer wanting to say the surname she had held for years. The Apocalypse looked at the kirlia, who nodded. He wrote down her name on a sheet of paper which had numerous questions in black ink printed on it.

"Do you have intentions of spying on the team?"

"No." Tori replied seriously. The grunt looked at the kirlia, who nodded again. He wrote something down on the second blank.

"How old are you?"

"Ten and a half." The grunt received another nod from kirlia.

"For what motives did you decide to join us?"

"For one thing, I get all thrilled even if I break the law slightly. I can't get money the way trainers usually do, cause the police are after me. In a team, you can get taught how to be good at escaping police and stealing things, as well as train your pokemon and stay well fed. Besides, since Team Apocalypse is going to rule the world I think i'll help them towards that." Tori replied. The kirlia looked quite impressed as she nodded to the grunt. Tori waited a while for the grunt to scribble her answer in notes.

"What is your view of Team Rocket?"

Suddenly a unpredictable and wild fury gripped Tori, and her eyes burned with fierce fire. "I hate them!" She spat. "I want to hunt them down and pummel their pokemon with mine until they beg me to stop! And i'll frame them and defeat them until they become less than a pile of grime in jail!"

Bandit promptly fell off her shoulder, Phoenix caught him just in time. None of them were used to her violent side. Thankfully, it was expressed at the enemy and always would be... hopefully. Tori was a bit surprised herself, but didn't doubt the truth of any of her words. The kirlia now appeared as impressed as Phoenix, which was a lot. Tori briefly assumed that those two would get on well if given the chance. the grunt didn't need the nod, he could tell from the raw fury of Tori and the impressed look of his kirlia that it was the truth.

"Good. Very good. Now, do you have a criminal record? If so, list all crimes committed. Even small ones."

"Yes. I stole an apple from a shop, refused to give a trainer the forfeit after losing, sneaked into a safari zone without paying, and attacked some Jennys." Tori replied, the flame dying from her eyes to the spark of determination that never died, and never had done. The man recieved confirmation from his Kirlia and scribbled on the sheet.

"What is your opinion of pokemon?" He asked, voice emotionless and eyes cold and hard as stone.

"What?" Tori asked, surprised.

"At what level do you think they stand? Are they lesser beings?"

"Hell no. It only takes a Translator to prove practically all of them are as smart as humans, and they all have emotions like we do. Pokemon are equals, and should be treated like that by everyone." Tori replied, her eye spark flaring up again into defiant flame. She hoped Team Apocalypse wasn't like the Rockets.

But no, for once the man looked approving after recieving confirmation from the kirlia. "Takes us a lot of time to find people that say that. We turn away the ones who think pokemon are slaves, we approve those who understand that pokemon have emotions and rights, but think of them as lessers. People like you, well..." He stopped. "Next question." Tori gave him a quirky sort of look as he asked the next question.

"State all pokemon that were ever in your possession, if applicable, nicknames, and current location." He said. Tori hadn't been expecting that. It would cause her much pain.

"My first pokemon, Bandit, the zigzagoon. On my shoulder. Phoenix, the pidgeotto, on my shoulder. Nightshade, the houndour, in a pokeball in my bag... and... and B-Brightwing the beautifly... dead by hand of Team Rocket." Tori whispered the last bit, and a tear unaccompanied by sobs trickled down her face. In her mind Tori saw the grey pokeball, the pokeball that was never to open again...

"Kirl..." The kirlia told her soothingly, giving the grunt a nod, who threw Tori a sympathetic glance.

"Good news, all questions answered to Team Apocalypses expectations for recruits. What is the current level of your pokemon?"

Tori's face immediately brightened. "Level 16, Nightshade's almost at 17." She replied. The Team Apocalypse grunt shook her hand.

"That puts you in the Level 10-20 group. You will be in training for two months, if anything needs revision then maybe longer. Take this badge and show it to the guard at the Base entrance, he will take you to find uniform that fits you. After that you will be assigned a group and a room, which will be occupied by one to three other female trainees of roughly your age and experience, all newly employed. Kirlia will take your form to the Boss and she will supervise one of your training sessions. She sees all of the trainees, she likes to assess who is most likely to gain status in the team. Enjoy your new career." And he gave her a badge which was black with a white A on it, the A had a single yellow dot in the middle.

The man gave the form to the kirlia, who teleported off somewhere, and the grunt showed her a staircase of branches accessable by a gap on the other side of the base. The trunk there had markings where all branches lower than the secret base had been removed, and as the sunlight glinted there it was clear that it had been waxed. Tori climbed the branches until she came to a point by the cliff completely invisible from anywhere but where she was, the leaves of the tree shrouded it. Tori noticed briefly that this was a evergreen tree and did not shed leaves in Autumn. There was a door in the cliff, and Tori opened it.

Chapter 12: We won't forget

Tori was surprised to find a very large cave. It looked man made, probably chipped away by pokemon. The ceiling was fairly even, it was painted silver and non hanging lights lit every passage. The floor was tiled, it was a sort of bluish silver and completely smooth. Suddenly a voice from nowhere disturbed her.

"Badge?" It asked, and Tori jumped before relaxing as she saw a glass sheet with a door in it seperating her from a kind of office, there was a desk and a chair in which an Apocalypse was sitting, wearing the normal uniform and a identity badge that she couldn't quite make out. She flashed her badge, and the man stood up and opened the door, emerging from his office, smiling.

"Sorry to be so untrusting, but it is possible you were a Jenny in disguise who beat up Spencer, you know, the guard in the Tree Base. At least, that's what Eclipse tells us." He shrugged. "Anyway, welcome to Team Apocalypse! Come into my office, there's a back wardrobe/changing room thing with all sizes of uniforms in. Try them on and come out in the one that fits ya. The uniform includes pokeball belts, too. Take your time." He told her, and Tori followed him into the office, and entered the large changing room, locking the door behind her.

"He's funny." Tori told Bandit. "I hope they're all nice like that. There's bound to be some nasty guys, but still."

"Yeah. I feel quite comfortable around the Apocalypses, in that job interview it sounded like this team respects pokemon. I can live with that." Bandit agreed.

"Mm, much better than the Rockets. Anyway, get in your pokeball while I change." Tori ordered, recalling the zigzagoon without a further word. She then went through the hangers of many sized uniforms, all identical in looks. They were all usefully elastic, so if you were a kid you wouldn't need to replace yours, and if you got fat, it would still fit you. Tori eventually found one that fitted her perfectly, and clipped her pokeballs to the belt. She let Bandit out, who murmured in approval of her new outfit and jumped easily from the ground to her shoulder. He was really a remarkably good jumper now.

Tori exited the room, stuffing her old clothes into her bag.

"Nice fit." commented the man. "My name's Matt, by the way." He said.

"Tori. Pleased to meet you." She replied, and shook his hand. "May I ask what this place exactly is, apart from the Apocalypse hideout, that is." Matt brightened.

"It's a large network of caves constructed by our pokemon. We use the water pokemon to make the floors smooth before tiling them and we replenish the electricity every now and then with the electrical pokemon that our scientists have. The place is equivalent to a small town, really. There's an open meadow on top of the cliff, but it's so high that no-one ever goes there. Our emergency escape exit comes out there. A huge section of the base is contributed to our special indoors pokemon reserve."

"Pokemon reserve?" Tori repeated, puzzled.

"We made the floor deep so we can put soil there and grow heather and grass and weeds and so on. It's the largest part of the base, about two miles radius for the whole thing. It certainly helps that the cliff is so big, if we ever need to expand we can do it easily. We have castforms who control the weather there, and our scientific devices harness the attacks and decide how long it will last. There are never droughts, and never floods, but we try to make the weather change so it sort of matches the current season. We dug up some trees and put them in there, apple trees so the pokemon can feed themselves. As for the carnivores, we give them meat so they don't need to eat the other pokemon."

"All the pokemon are either ones that trainers or Rockets abandoned, or simply ones who want to aid in our cause. If an Apocalypse gets enough merits for completing missions, then they can buy a chance to get a new pokemon, or two, depending on how many merits they have. However, they have to find and capture the pokemon themselves, so someone who's pokemon are level 20 can't get themselves a level 40 or something. It's all very efficient, we even have two lakes, one with salt water and one with fresh water, so water pokemon can get their natural environment. It's all very efficient." Matt explained.

"It certainly is. I bet the Rockets don't have nearly as good a system." Tori murmured.

"They don't, our spies found that out easily, because Team Rocket isn't smart enough to use psychics to test. We even had our psychics link minds with our spies to make sure they don't get their memories modified. Anyway, it looks like someone's assigned you a room. See?" He indicated a important looking man walk over to the office.

"Tori?" He asked briefly, and Tori noticed a badge saying 'Apocalypse Admin Sean.'

"That's me." Tori replied cheerfully, and Teal nodded approvingly. It usually took the women much longer to stop fussing around over what they looked like.

"You've been assigned a group, and the typical newbie suite to share with up to three other members of your particular gender. In this case, there are two. The base is large, but your roommates will be equally oblivious to the way around and there will be three maps provided in your room. Dinner is from six pm to 12 pm. Since it is your first day tomorrow, I reccommend not staying up that late. Training starts at eight every day, for you in Sector 12. Don't forget this." He said sternly.

Tori gave Bandit a look which said clearly: 'Remember that or I may have to kill you'. He gulped and tried to concentrate his hazel brown eyes on the stern looking admin.

"'kay." She told him. "Since I don't have a map yet, are you going to escort me?" She recieved an affirmative nod from Teal. "See ya, Matt." Tori said to Matt. He bowed his head in simple farewell as the Admin led her off. She went up lifts, down stairs, on warp panels, all sorts of wild things... until Sean stopped at a door marked 216 and knocked.

"Who is it?" Asked a cheerful female voice from inside.

"Sean, with your new roommate." Answered Sean in that same neutral tone, with his expression cool.

"Already! I'd better tell Sarah to hurry up with her hair... Be right there!" Exclaimed the voice. Tori grinned. She sounded quite friendly. A second later, the door opened to reveal a tall, thin girl around fourteen years old, and behind a girl with the same sort of look to her and the same dark brown hair, but a bit shorter than the girl at the door, around Tori's height. "Thanks, Sean. You'd better get back to whatever the heck you were doing." The tall girl said, making a welcoming gesture to Tori. Sean gave a curt nod before walking pointedly away.

"Sean's okay but not much of a conversationalist. He brought us to our room this morning, saying to expect another roommate sometime. We pretty much got used to our suite as soon as we sat down. They even give us good hairdryers!" She exclaimed. "Oh, i'm Elaine by the way, and this is my little sister Sarah." Tori smiled, Elaine seemed nice enough.

"I'm Tori." She said, walking into the suite. "Pleased to meet you." The room she stepped into had a TV and four armchairs, each looking reasonably comfortable. The floor was wooden here to give it a more homey feel.

"Likewise." Elaine said, and shook Tori's hand. Sarah, meanwhile said nothing and slumped in an armchair. "You'll have to excuse Sarah, she's a terrible grouch. She's okay when you get to know her though." Elaine commented, and Tori didn't know wether she should laugh or not. In the end, she just smiled faintly.

Elaine zoomed through a door and then back again with a folded up map, and handed it to Tori. Tori nodded thanks and opened it. Sarah watched with a look of amusement as Tori gaped. "It's huge!" She announced dumbfoundedly.

"Yeah, I know. Try to memorise it though. This cliff is huge, goes on for miles. Eclipse, you know, she's the leader, was a genius to set up here." Elaine said with amusement.

"She was." Tori murmured, tracing the route from her room to Sector 12. "Sector 12 is here." Tori said to herself boring its location into her memory.

"Sector 12, eh? That means we're in your group." Sarah announced.

"Yeah. Do you know what happens in your first training session?" Tori asked curiously.

"A little. Apparently they give you a talk and then have a tournament in the group, all of the newbies have pokemon battles and the winner of it all gets put into the highest group. There, Eclipse decides who is most likely to be a good admin in the future. Apparently she never tells you if she thinks you could be an admin, I think that's a lie though." Elaine said, and Sarah smirked.

"Sounds cool, I can't wait to see what you've got." Tori told Elaine, grinning.

"Same. Sarah's convinced she'll get in the highest group, I bet she could. Anyway, it's almost time for dinner. Each of these rooms has a room with a bag of pokemon food, each one for a certain type. We should let them pig out now, before we go the the cafe." Elaine replied, and wlaked into the mentioned room. She had taken a metal bowl from a shelf and started spooning food into it. Flying pokemon food. Once she'd finished doing that, she took three more bowls and began filling them.

Tori walked in, and started preparing her pokemon's meals. She got some dark pokemon food and fire pokemon food and mixed them together in one bowl, a mix of normal and flying food, and a simple bowl of normal pokemon food. Sarah was preparing her own food. Without hesitation, Tori released her other two pokemon and directed them to thier food bowls, Bandit was already gorging in his.

Sarah was watching Nightshade with a mixture of envy and fascination. "Cool, Houndour, I always liked dog pokemon." She commented, and chuckled as Nightshade's small tail wagged faster.

"Same." Tori whispered in her ear, not wanting Phoenix to hear. After that, Sarah was much easier to get along with. Tori watched as Sarah released a Cyndaquil and a small buish dog pokemon.

"Ri-" It barked, before Tori's translator recognised the language and translated. "Food!" It yelled, and gorged in a mix of steel and fighting food.

"What's that?" Tori asked, indicating the dog.

"A Riolu. A rare pokemon from Sinnoh. I got him from an adoption center, before the Apocalypses cleared it out and put the pokemon in the Reserve. I think the Reserve rules, abandoned pokemon don't have to die of boredom in a pen. They can run around and have fun until someone wants them." Sarah replied. Tori murmured agreement, admiring the dog. She watched as Elaine released her pokemon.

A zigzagoon, taillow, grovyle... and... a beautifly. As Tori looked at the beautifly, who looked so much like Brightwing, strange things happened... For a second, the beautifly was Brightwing, and it was fluutering its wings feebly as the life was drained from it, and suddenly the image of a grey pokeball marked R.I.P filled Tori's vision, and horrified, Tori sped from the feeding room. She collapsed on a armchair, sobbing. No tears were falling, but Tori's eyes had a... foggy look to them. They seemed lost and faraway.

Tori barely noticed her roommates dash over. She noticed the words they said. "What the heck happened? Why are two of your pokemon cowering?" Sarah demanded.

"B...Brightwing." Tori said hoarsely. "Is Phoenix not sad? The pidgeotto?"

"She stopped eating and looks quite grim." Elaine replied, seeming puzzled.

"Why are you sobbing? Why are your pokemon traumatized?" sarah demanded. In a almost dreamlike state, Tori walked over to her bag and took something from it. She displayed the grey pokeball, unwilling to let it go.

"Brightwing was the first pokemon I caught. Team Rocket killed her." Tori said in a shaky voice. Elaine instantly assessed the situation and dashed into the feeding room.

"A beautifly?" Sarah guessed quietly. "I think I know now why you joined the team."

"I thought I was over it. We all did. Apparently, we're not. Phoenix is the only one here with sense enough to realise that beautifly isn't Brightwing. But yes, revenge was part of the reason I wanted to join this team." Tori replied, and put the pokeball back in her bag, her whole body aching with grief. Tori managed to pull herself together before dinner.

Chapter 13: Tournament

The adventure continues...

The next day, Tori walked with Elaine down to Sector 12. It appeared no-one was late, people were enrtering it at the same time as them. Sector 12 included a battle stadium and a classroom. There were eight people in their sector.

"To determine your current skill in pokemon battling, today we'll be having a tournament." Said the 'Apocalypse sensei'. Tori and Elaine grinned at each other. "This group had eight people, all of which will take a slip of paper from this box which will determine which match you'll be fighting in and who you'll be battling. There will be the quarterfinals, with four matches. The winners of those will fight in the semifinals, and then there will be the finals. The winner will be placed in the top group. The matches will be one on one."

Murmurs of excitement were exchanged in the room. Tori heard someone whisper: "We've never had to survive without money, we just came here because training got boring. I bet the admins had to, and that's why they went far... but..."

"yeah, I know what you mean. We don't have that experience so it'll be hard on us." agreed another. Tori smiled slightly. That's where you're wrong.

Tori took her slip of paper. It was 3, meaning she would fight in the second match. Elaine got 8. Tori watched with mild interest as the two junior males fought each other with their strongest pokemon, a mudkip pitted against a grovyle. Naturally, the grovyle won. "I'll be fighting that one." Tori muttered to herself. She decided to use Phoenix, since she had a type advantage and was probably her only pokemon that could match grovyle's speed. But first, she had to pound a rookie.

She stepped calmly onto the stadium, taking her palce in the trainers box. There was a ripple of murmurs at how calm she was, faced with the combusken the opponent had just sent out. With a single fluid motion, Tori threw her arm forward, over which Bandit ran and jumped from her shoulder, landing gracefully on the arena in front.

"Combusken, ember!" The opponent yelled, his voice confident and arrogant, he still carried the attitude of a typical trainer in a gym battle. he had to ditch that.

"Jump, then tail whip." Tori replied, and Bandit effortlessly jumped to avoid the embers, leaping over to where the combusken was, bending low, and sweeping his rough tail over its legs repeatedly, and the hen pokemon tried distractedly to swat him away. "Head butt." The attack was unexpected, and the combusken was unguarded in its attempts to stop Bandit from whacking it with his tail. The combusken took a lot of damage.

"Combusken! Scratch!" Tori rolled her eyes.

"Oh please, can't you do better than that? C'mon Bandit, finish it. Water pulse." Bandit had no trouble flooring the pokemon from there. He stepped away from his opponent as it gave a small 'busk' of surprise and fainted. Bandit padded in small zigzags over to Tori, whereupon his jumped onto her shoulder. Tori walked away to sit on the sidelines, sitting on a bench. She watched the next teo matches with empty eyes. She did nothing but plan her battle styles.

When she finally had her turn, she walked back onto the arena. As predicted, the opponent released his grovyle. In return, she released Phoenix, the fast growing orange pidgeotto. It very much helped that she grew very quickly, a useful mutation.

"Phoenix, rise." Tori ordered, and the bird flew upwards by a light, so that she did not see the light but anyone who wanted to look at her was blinded by it.

"Bullet seed grovyle!" Yelled the trainer. But the attack missed, the pokemon could not see Phoenix clearly enough to strike.

"Quick attack, dual wing." Phoenix suddenly swooped down with amazing speed, then she did something that was not part of quick attack, she opened her wings. She drew them back as she glided at breakneck speed, then used her beak to land the attack and buffeted the grovyle with her wings at the same time.

That attack alone defeated the grovyle. It really helped having a mutated pokemon sometimes.

--------

Elaine had defeated her opponent with apparent ease, making a game of her matches as Tori had done. She had a shiny taillow, it was gold instead of navy blue and appeared to have a boost in strength as Phoenix did. Tori stepped into the arena, releasing Phoenix. The taillow was still out, and was not recalled.

"Solar, quick attack!" Elaine commanded.

"Phoenix, neutralise technique four." Tori commanded, and her pokemon nodded as she recognised the command. Phoenix used quick attack to get quickly over to a wall, and there she stayed, apparently trapped on the floor of the corner. As the taillow was about to hit, Phoenix darted up to the ceiling, making the taillow crash into the wall and stay there, momentarily dazed. Phoenix kicked from the ceilling with quick arrack, folded her wings, and started spinning. The attack hit Solar the taillow with incredible force.

Amazingly, the taillow was still concious. It flew up with a defiant cry.

"Quick peck!" Elaine screamed.

"Strategy Kaza." Tori commanded. Phoenix grinned. This was sure to make the taillow faint...

They had recently discovered via the pokedex that Phoenix was part fire type, so had learned to harness it. Phoenix did the same thing as she had before, stuck close to a wall and waited. Again, she dodged, leaving the taillow's quick attack/peck combination to be used on the wall, getting its beak stuck in a inconvenient crevice. Again, Phoenix kicke doff the ceilling with quick attack. But this time, she did not spin, she was shrouded in fire. There was a roar of flames as Phoenix hit Solar, and when the dust cleared and the flames died the taillow was unconcious.

Tori was going to the higher group. There was approval from the sensei, awe from the other people she had beaten, and suprise from those who looked at the far side of the room. Tori turned her head and suppressed a gasp. There was a huge arcanine there, on which a tall figure was seated. A second later, the arcanine was next to her, leaving a whirr of wind in its path. The figure jumped from the arcanine.

She was tall, over two and a half meters high. She had dark green eyes that flashed dangerously in the light, and she had jet black hair that went down to her ankles, perfectly straight, without curls or waves. She wore plain jeans and a black sleeveless shirt with the apocalypse mark on it, the traditional bandana around her head. Around the white A on her shirt were seven gold star marks, and the seven stars wore around the bandana too.

"Leader Eclipse." Said the sensei with respect, bowing his head. Eclipse looked at him with a hard look, then turned her stony gaze to Tori.

"I watched you battle. There was no doubt, from the beginning, that you would not win this tournament. Your pokemon received not a scratch, it is rare we find one with such potential. Come, there are others waiting in the Sector 7."

Tori, momentarily stunned, did notihng. then she noticed that Eclipse had mounted her arcanine, and was gesturing for Tori to get aboard. Tori obediently hopped on, finding an odd instinct telling her how to grip the pokemon so she was safe and did not hurt it. Tori saw some emotion disappear from Eclipse's face, but the other people seemed to have seen it. They all appeared awed.

Tori remembered what she had heard. 'Eclipse never actually tells you if you have potential.' That was weird...

There were only three other people in the group. The rest of the people had drawn in their matches, and it was specifically said that no one would advance should this happen. The other three were a blue haired boy called Mark, a blonde girl by the name of Lucy, and... Sarah.

Sarah was gaping, as were the others. Tori didn't know how unusual it was for Eclipse to let anyone ride her beloved arcanine, otherwise known as Blaze.

"Do well!" Blaze barked to her before he disappeared into his pokeball. Tori smiled slightly. Bandit was a bit dazed by it all, he had been more than a little scared of Blaze.

"Take a seat, Tori." Eclipse told her. Tori scampered over to a chair next to Sarah...who was still gaping.

"Present yourselves!" Hissed an admin, standing straight and rigid. The others immediately copied. Eclipse nodded slightly.

"At ease." She said. They relaxed and sat down. "Now." She brought a riding crop out of nowhere and whacked the classroom table with it, making them jump with its sudden noise. "You are the top of your league. You are the ones with at least a mild possibility of going far in this team. Others amy get high rank as grunts... but you may be our future admins. Obviously, some of you are more skilled than others..." Eclipse's eyes had been sweeping continually over the four, and now they lingered on Tori for a while.

"But that does not change the fact that you all have the same level of training. Rookies usually are taught about our rules and goals, and train their pokemon and are encouraged to try new methods of battling. You will be doing this... but also will be taking the advanced course. This involves taking the same obstacle course as the officer jennys take, some of it harder. The other rookies will not be doing this until one of their pokemon is level twenty five. This training will speed the level growth of your pokemon faster than the rookie's regimen."

The class had been soaking up every word like a sponge, all of them (even Sarah) with an eager expression. Well, Tori didn't. She was more than highly interested, but she kept her face emotionless and suppressed the pounding excitement rising within her, thus slowing her breaths and her pulse, expending less energy and effort.

"You may be wondering about partners. When you are qualified grunts, hopefully within three months, you will be given a partner to go on missions with. If you do not get on with this partner, who will be the opposite gender, then you will be assigned another. Unless that partner happens to become an admin with you, that is if you beocme an admin, then it unlikely you'll have a partner at all as an admin. Admins lead operations and pull of large ones by themselves sometimes. Also, if you have stone evolution pokemon, and you want to evolve them, there are element stones here. Though we only allow stone evolution if the pokemon wants to evolve."

"Since this is the special class, I am giving you the classroom talk. Team Apocalypse seeks world domination, but we don't set about it the way Rockets do. Our pokemon are our friends, and we made deals with some strong wild pokemon who are leaders of their clans. When we take over the world, pokemon will have more respect. They will be allowed to make their own choices, and our scouts will anihilate anyone abusing pokemon or their rights. This is our goal, but it cannot be changed that we attempt to achieve it via criminal deeds. However, our methods are more efficient than those of the Rockets."

"We took the surviving Super stylers of Go-Rock squad in Fiore, and replicated them, giving them to high rankers. It's easier to capture pokemon with stylers, and we can get trained pokemon with them also. After capturing them with the styler, they do not fight back, so capturing them with our specially made pokeballs works much more easily. Those pokeballs are almost master balls, but we can't yet create such powerful pokeballs. We do, however have another trick for trained pokemon. Before we use the styler, we use a device that sends sonar to affect their brainwaves. It will make them cease to feel loyalty to their trainers."

"They purposely do not work if the pokemon loves their trainer very much, so if the pokemon obeys its trainer after you use the machine, then its a lost cause. You can't steal it. Doing so would cause the pokemon and the trianer to waste away, and we do not cause deaths. Anyone breaking these rules will be kicked from the team and given to the police, memory blanked. Now, let's start the training."

-----------

"Come off it!" Tori snorted. Sarah was so weird. Elaine was watching with amusement. "What makes you think Eclipse has a soft spot for me?"

"She told you you had potential, and she looked surprised when you rode her arcanine!" Sarah argued. Elaine fell off her chair.

"She did not ride Eclipse's arcanine!" Elaine spluttered. "And Eclipse doesn't get surprised!"

"I did ride Blaze." Tori said defensively. "Bandit was scared stiff of him, but I think he's quite friendly under his gruff personality."

"I can't believe this... here we are, Eclipse's neices, and completely outdone by a random girl from nowhere." Elaine complained.

"That was unexpected. You're related?" Tori asked, suprised.

"Yeah, that's why we joined so young. We only recently found out. Unfortunatly, Eclipse already has a deputy. We aren't heirs." Sarah told her.

"I'm getting a headache, I don't usually have so many things crammed into my head." Tori complained.

Chapter 14: Warriors

Long chapter today!

A month later, a considerably stronger Tori and Bandit were on their way to Sector 7 for training. All her pokemon were above or at level twenty five now. Nightshade was at level 25, Phoenix was level 26, and so was Bandit.

"What about Eclipse scares you?" Tori asked Bandit.

"She smells like you." He replied.

"So?" Tori asked.

"Never mind." Replied Bandit.

Tori entered Sector 7 for another day of training. The wall of death no longer seemed so impossible to scale, it no longer seemed hard to crawl on her belly underwire netting as fast as Bandit was running. It no longer seemed impossible for Tori to destroy a punching bag with her strength...

Out of the four other students in her group, Tori was the only one who took the martial arts course. They said it would be very hard, so no one wanted it... but Tori knew she would need it some time. In a very short time, their training methods had made her a black belt. The obstacle courses and martial arts and all the other trainign courses had hardened her muscles and sharpened her mind. She could now duel a level 40 makuhita and not get clobbered. Even if it used attacks. She was on the verge of being able to defeat one, but wasn't there quite yet.

Eclipse wanted her to wear weights while doing the obstacle course to help improve her strength. It was hard going, very hard. Tori went to sleep each night sore and exhausted. She had started by having weights attatched to her belt, then to her arms, then to her legs. Each weight weighed ten kilos. Now she wore the weights and very heavy boots. She was slowly being given more weight, so she slowly became able to handle more and more weight.

What Tori did know was that she was a heck of an expert martial artist. What she did not know was that she could now probably take on a hariyama and survive. Tori's strength grew with the strength of her pokemon. The other three students were not in the same league, they watched her progress with awe. Even Sarah admitted Tori was stronger than her.

-----

(One month later)

Tori had started carrying 20 kilos. Then 40, 50, 60... After she was able to do the obstacle course with ease carrying 60 kilograms, they gave her some sort of weird wristband that weighed 20 kilos. She had one on each wrist. They also gave her a weighted bandana (15 kilos). Tori, having been raised by snobs, had never studied martial arts before. She loved it, being able to protect her poekmon instead of the other way round was quite funny. Of course, her poekmon could still pound her because she had no special abilities...

Tori trained and trained. her pokemon trained and trained. All of her pokemon were now at level 30, the pokemon of the others were a bit lower in level. The teachers were secretly amazed by Tori's strength and progress, she refused to give up. Not wanting to inflate her head, they did not tell her that she had done what makes a person a rare, brilliant martial artist. She had gone beyond the limits of human strength, humans were not meant to get that strong. Tori was very strong... but she didn't look it. She still looked weedy and frail for some reason. However, when she tensed her muscles, they proved to be large and very hard.

Tori refused to show sign of weakness. She did not back down, try to rest - she kept on going. Tori began to think that Sarah was right, and that Eclipse did have a soft spot for her. Tori decided it was because she was the only one who took the martial arts course.

The karate teachers did not allow Tori to remove her weights at any time, not even to sleep or go to dinner. They told her, truthfully, that she was not invincible. A machoke of any level could beat her easily. Weaker pokemon would find it hard to defeat her, but would still be able to because of their abilities.

After she got used to the new weight (115 kilos) they gave her a very odd feeling jacket, which was apparently made of a special material the Apocalypses had discovered... and it weighed 50 kilos.

So, for months, Tori trianed. Her weights slowly got heavier. And Tori still had to do the obstacle course, which was hard enough without using weights! Tori swam as well, swimming was quite hard with all those weights, but good exercise.

Tori was also worried about Nightshade. According to the pokedex, he should have evolved by now. But he hadn't... Elaine's taillow was taking an age to evolve too... annoyingly. Solar was level 25. He grew fast as Phoenix.

Tori didn't realise that carrying a weight of 165 kilos was monumental. Sure... it was very hard. The sudden increase of weight was hard to cope with. Tori had to carry deodrant wherever she went because she sweated so much.

--------

One day, at the end of an obstacle course, Eclipse came to Tori while she was applying deodrant. Tori didn't notice her until she was a meter away. Immediately Tori stood up straight and rigid.

"At ease." Eclipse told her. Tori relaxed, bowed her head, and continued with her deodrant. "The stronger you get the stronger you smell." Said Eclipse with faint amusement. Eclipse was actually making a joke?! Great lugia... "I took that course too. What level do they say you are now?"

The teachers had devices which measured human strength. They used levels like they did with pokemon.

"Fifty three." Tori answered.

"Good, very good. I happen to be level 70." Tori looked at her in awe. "Do you know what makes the teachers so amazed? It's the face that it takes you only three months to get to that level, when it took me three years. of course, I wasn't under the same rigourous training..."

Tori was stunned. Three years? That scared her. Maybe she came from a line of people who were brilliant fighters, maybe they had evolved a bit so it was possible for them to get that strong. Maybe her real parents had been great warriors... As for Eclipse, she had no idea.

"Yes, it's amazing how far you've come. The others still have progress to do... but I think you, more than anyone is ready to become a grunt." It took Tori a while to digest this information, to make sense of it... Her eyes lit up when she realised what Eclipse was saying.

She didn't have to use weights any more! Oh, and she got to be a full member... but not having to do the course was definately the best part.

"Thank you!" Tori exclaimed.

"You earned it. And now, you're strong enough to rip apart anyone who denies that." Eclipse replied. "I think you're just in time, we have a partner who doesn't get along with his current one. You can work together. Unfortunately, there is another course you have to do with your partner, to get used to him. But you don't need to use your weights, we'll take those off later."

Tori's spirits sank slightly at the mention of another course, then rose again when she learned that she didn't need her weights.

"What?! There's another course?!" Yelped Mark. It appeared the others had been spying on them. They didn't see it, but Eclipse reddened slightly before her eyes went hard and the sudden blush vanished.

"Yes, and for dropping eaves you now have an extra hour of training." Eclipse told them coldly. They groaned. Tori grinned uncertainly.

-------------

Tori was moved to a new room. It was a lot like her old room, except it was made for two people. It had two armchairs and two beds. Tori unpacked her clothes, putting the three spare uniforms in her wardrobe. It appeared her partner hadn't arrived yet. A knock and open of the suite door told her otherwise. She walked over to him.

"Tori, right?" he asked.

"Yup. And I suppose you're Jay?" Tori asked. Apparently, Jay was the name of her new partner. He nodded. Jay was aboutthe same height as Tori, though he looked older. Not much though, about a year and a half older. He had dark navy blue hair and odd black eyes which had the look of someone who had seen too much of the world. Said look did not match his age.

"Yeah. I keep having to switch partners, I can never stay with one for more than a week. I'm a bit too quiet for all of the chatty girls I'm put with." he replied, quietly, without any emotion.

"Oh, so you won't get annoyed if I decide I don't want to say anything for a while? I tend to do that a lot." Tori laughed. Jay smiled a bit, and shook his head. He walked through the suite and started unpacking. (If anyone has Diamond and Pearl, Jay looks a lot like yourself if you're male)

Tori found the feeding room and began laying out the food for her pokemon, then released them. They all ate happily. Each one of them was level 35. Tori watched as Jay prepared the food for his pokemon. Then he let them out.

A powerful looking spearow wasted no time in finding the food bowl, a skarmory ate his own food, and Tori scampered away to avoid being flattened by the charizard that appeared.

"You like your fliers then." Tori commented. He nodded.

"Yeah. I like fire and electric pokemon too. Sadly, there is no flying electric pokemon aside from zapdos... Mine are all level 35. I got onto the last course a month ago, but it's been complicated because I keep having to redo with each new partner. Apparently this course is only two weeks, but I keep on losing partners a week early." Jay told her.

"That must be annoying. Well, hopefully you won't have to redo it again. Anyway, just wondering, were you in the top class when you did the first training courses?" Tori asked.

"No, I lost in the semifinals. You?"

"Yeah, I got through. Did you know that in the top group we had to do the obstacle course from day 1? hell it was hard. maybe it wouldn't have been so hard if I hadn't taken the martial arts course... speaking of which, I can't wait to see how strong its made me."

"You took that course? I heard its the toughest course out there. What do they do to make you stronger?" Jay asked incredulously.

"See these weights? Apparently I get to take them off tomorrow." Tori indicated the weights attatched to her belt, arms, legs, etc. "They make you a black belt then smother you with weights. I'd say I've got roughly 180 kilos on me. I had to do the obstacle courses and swimming and everything with them on, too. It is really hard..."

Jay thought she had to be bluffing. No human could carry that weight without effort! Apparently Tori was boastful... oh boy, hell would he have to redo the course.

"Here, feel this wristband. I have no idea how they make them this heavy. Don't worry, its only twenty kilos." Tori told him, removing one of her wristbands and handing it to Jay, who immediately had to struggle to keep the weight from flooring him, was very impressed. He supposed she wasn't bragging after all. He handed her the wristband, which she placed back on her wrist. Jay hardly saw it, but Tori winced very slightly. She was obviously finding this unbearably hard, yet she didn't complain. For the first time, Jay respected the partner he had been given.

------------

"Tori, you may remove your weights." Eclipse told her as Tori entered the 'Escape room'. Jay was meanwhile gawping at how familiar Eclipse seemed to Tori. Eclipse actually seemed comfortable around her... he noticed distractedly that they looked very alike. He also noted that Tori's eyes were amber, a very odd colour for human eyes. But she was definately human. (she is, he's not just assuming that)

He watched as Tori removed 170 kilos of weight from her body. The weights came from her belt, her wristbands were removed, the weight on her arms disappeared. She even removed her bandana and replaced it with a normal one. She then took off... a jacket? It looked so much like another shirt that he hadn't noticed it was in fact a jacket. Soon, all of her weights were gone. Tori stared at her hand, then did several warm up exercises.

"Whoa, I feel light as air!" She exclaimed. Tor was suddenly filled with an urge to run, to release this unfathomable energy that she could feel within her.

"On top of the cliff is a large forest. Without directions, you must find a building in this forest. There are strong pokemon there, feel free to catch one if you want, though I don't reccomend it. There will be traps in the building, but you must get past them to retrieve an orange orb fromt he building. This is your training misison, you must work together. Go." Eclipse explained. Tori and Jay nodded in unison, and went into the lift. It carried them upwards, in the middle of a forest. The lift had a rock on top of it.

The lift then descended, and it looked like a normal boulder. On closer inspection, there was an odd sticking out but that was easy to recognise.

"C'mon then." Jayy decided.

"Which direction?"

"I choose that way." Jay announced, pointing east.

"Why?"

"Because. Now, let's run!" Jay replied, and started runnign at a steady speed.

Tori did likewise, and ran effortlessly at a steady speed, alive with the feeling of power pulsing through her...

"Tori!" The voice was Jay's, and it was very far away. She looked around to see that Jay was about 110 meters behind. Tori stared, and continued to stare until Jay arrived.

"What happened?" She asked.

"You shot off like Eclipse's arcanine!" He exclaimed.

"Oh. Eclipse did tell me I would be surprised. Hmm..." While Tori was thinking about unknown matters, Bandit started growling.

"Tori, we have a hostile ekans attacking." He announced. Tori jumped around, and without word sent out Nightshade.

"he's about to level up."Tori explained. "Nightshade, ember." The attack was dealt, the ekans was quite low level. "Flamethrower." That last attack wiped it out, and Nightshde went up a level. Tori waited, silently begging that he evolved.

"Why are you keeping me out? Are there any other enemies?" Nightshade asked. Tori shook her head.

"No-" She was proven wrong as a large poochyena jumped out of no where and but Nightshade on the neck.

His eyes widened with shock at the sudden attack, then suddenly his eyes burned and his lips drew back in a feral snarl. A second later, he was glowing. Growing bigger. The poochyena fell off as its opponent's neck suddnely got too big to bite. When the light faded, a huge houndoom stood there, eyes blazing defiantly.

"Doom!" He roared.

"YesYesYes!" Tori whooped. The poochyena ran away. "I've been waiting forever for you to evolve! Anyway, now that you're big, I can ride you. Jay can ride his Charizard. What do you say?" Tori asked.

"You bet! By the way, you sit between the two ridges and hold these horns, and use those to steer. Dig your heels in to make me jump... and jerk my head up a bit to stop. Same to start." Nightshade instructed. "The admin's houndoom told me that."

So Tori got aboard her new houndoom, while Jay mounted his charizard. Tori leaned forward and gripped the horns. She jerked them down, making Nightshade's head go up, and make him start running. Tori whooped. It was fun! She navigated around rocks and jumped over logs, getting the hang of it quite nicely. Jay just flew around above on his charizard.

When they eventually found the building, Tori dragged Jay out of the traps, such as very deep pits. If she happened to be hanging into said pits, then she pulled herself up quite easily. They got the orb, and went back to base.

Chapter 15: And next

The two weeks for that course involved mock missions, where they had to battle security pokemon, grunts dressed as Jennies, avoid traps, and learn how to use the Super Styler. Tori wasn't exactly very good at styler capturing... in fact, she was quite terrible.

She usually spun it in a circle so quickly that she lost control of the hand holding it, letting the styler go and smashing it into a million pieces on the ground. She would be very good at capturing if she could learn control. Jay was quite good at it. On the topic of Jay, she didn't seem to be arguing with him, in fact, they seemed to get on pretty well. So hopefully, it would stay that way, and Jay wouldn't have to learn the course of by heart.

---------

Thankfully, they lasted the fortnight. Phoenix was supposed to have evolved at level 36, and she was now level 40 and hadn't evolved. Elaine's Soalr hadn't, so maybe it was somethign about shiny pokemon taking their last form late. Bandit should have evolved ages ago, but he said he wanted to wait until he was level 45. he considered that 'ready'. Tori had become quite an exceptional houndoom rider, she and Nightshade both loved it. Nightshade kept on going on about how the Apocalypse scientists had discovered that houndoom is capable of further evolution, but they didn't know what was required to make the evolution happen.

Jay's spearow (Warrior) had recently evolved, and Jay had started to learn how to ride him. Tori was secretly impressed, because fearows and charizards were hard to raise and Jay had raised both of them. Jay said he was particuarly proud of his charizard, Inferno. Because he liked fire and pokemon that flew and Inferno happened to be both of those.

Random newsflash!

people hardly ever read author notes at the end, so i'm doing this. Out of these names, what do you like the most (for a female)

Kinta, Arkia, Mira, and Mykara.

Review with the answer please.

End newsflash

And now, finally, they were both full members of team Apocalypse. Tori and Jay were given black masks a lot like the one on Bandit's fur around his eyes, which cast a shadow on their eyes and made them difficult to see.

And they had just been assigned a mission, finally.

They were each given a portable Pokemon Storage system to put in their pokedexes, because there could be times when they would need a more efficient way of transporting pokemon. The storage system could hold 40 pokemon. They were also given a Switch Machine, the devices which depleted the loyalty of a pokemon to its trainer. The amchine could only dissipate a certain amount of it, so the pokemon who were very attatched to their trainers could not be affected.

They had been told to 'visit' Dewford and steal the pokemon of the fighting gym, all the ones whos allegiance could be changed. For those pokemon, it would not be stealing, it would be rescuing. The Apocalypses had made themselves public a month and a half ago, they had been delayed by the Rockets finding a spy among them.

But now, the Jennies were out for Apocalypse blood too. The Apocalypses had announced themselves to the region... the Rockets had had their base discovered, and they had been found out that way. Of course, Team Apocalypse knew where their new base was. They had build it in the Rocky pass, where the Magmas had built their base before they were wiped out. (The Magma and Aqua teams were destroyed)

Tori and Jay were currently flying to Dewford. Jay rode Inferno, and Tori put up with Warrior. She had no idea why, but to proper way to ride every rideable pokemon felt almost instinctive to know. After Tori had ridden Warrior, Jay had imitated how she rode the fearow and become rather good at it. But it took quite a while to get to Dewford, three hours... Tori had let Phoenix out to fly beside them for a while, and Phoenix took care of any annoying wingull that attacked.

When they landed it attracted a lot of attention. Only good trainers could have those pokemon. They both recalled their pokemon to their pokeballs, all of which had the nickname of the pokemon embroided on the ball in tiny gold writing, above the black line that seperated red from white. Bandit had decided he no longer wanted to stay out of his pokeball, and so stayed inside it.

Jay wore a plain black shirt and jeans. Tori wore her mask still, and a martial arts suit designed by Eclipse's tailors. While the wristbands in trianing had been heavy, these clothes were unbelievably lightweight and were very hard to tear. They were quite plan, but allowed easy movement. A white shirt and navy blue trousers which reached a little below her knees. A black belt was tied around her waist in the way that martial artists tie their belts.

"I'll start the diversion, you start with the plan." Tori whispered to him. He nodded, then walked casually away, then when he was sure no one was looking, he used his dark clothing to fade into the shadows and sneak away.

Tori, meanwhile made her way to the gym, her pokeballs in her bag and plan in her mind. She opened the door to the gym. It was like a training dojo, the floor was a non slippery stone that looked cold and dry, the walls were wooden and the only light was that that filtered through the small windows. Four people dressed in white robes and belts of varying colours sat on each side of the square room (as in four people sitting at each wall).

In the middle of the room, a muscled man performed punches and kicks of varying extravagance and skill. The others appeared to be watching him.

"So that is the cata designed to take on five opponents at once." The man in the middle said quietly.

"Gym leader Brawly?" Tori asked, her calm but loud voice ringing clearly around the room. The teacher turned to her.

"Yes. I assume you are a trainer, here for a gym battle." He replied.

"I am a trainer, but I am not here for a gym battle." She replied. He raised an eyebrow. "I am skilled in the art of pokemon battling, but also an expert in the martial arts. I am here to challenge you to a sparring match."

He blinked. "I can't fight a girl." Tori heard several of the other martial artists snigger. Tori pointed to her black belt.

"I didn't exactly sit around and wait to be given this, you know. I can hold my own. Unless you're afraid that little me will beat you?" Tori taunted. That insult always got them.

"Alright." Brawly growled. "But first, I need to make sure you can fight. Volunteers from the students!"

A yellow belted student stepped forwards. Brawly nodded to him, then stepped to the wall.

"This match will have no time limit. Let the match begin!" Brawly announced. Tori had already fallen into a defensive posture, setting a trap for the other fighter. She had left one side obviously unguarded, and when he attacked she would have him right where she wanted...

Predictably, the yellow belt started running towards her. Idiot. Didn't Brawly ever tell them to never attack head on if they can help it? Obviously not. Tori smirked, then waited for the last minute to slide to her left, jump off a wall (which the students hastily cleared) and kick the boy in his stomach. Taht was it, he was unconcious. Brawly's eyebrow was raised in surprise. She was better than he ahd expected. He gave her a small nod.

"Take him to my recovery room." Brawly ordered, and two men hurriedly carried the yellow belt away. "Now, you will be fighting me."

They both dropped into defensive stances at the same time.

"Begin!" Yelled someone on the sidelines. Tori closed her eyes, took a deep breath, then charged. She didn't approve of head on attacks, but this one had strategy. As she became within punching range, Brawly launched a suprisingly fast punch. Tori jumped to dodge it, doing a flip and landing behind him. Then she used a move she called 'rapid velocity' and hit the huge man with her punches like the bullets of a machine gun, without the pierce-someone's-flesh part. In five seconds, there were five punches. And she carried on with her assault for twenty seconds, then jumped away, leaving the gym leader gasping for air. He grumbled as he recovered, then launched a powerkick at her.

Tori neatly dodged, then punched him in the stomach with a force that could break through the wall of the gym. While Brawly was doubled over with pain, without warning, Tori started pummeling the students. Only one weak punch to each of them though. She stopped by the door, then released Nightshade.

"Send out your pokemon. All of you. This is a level 40 houndoom here, and it will take at least all of you to beat him. What are you waiting for? He's part dark. That means you have an advantage." Tori ordered cooly. "You're not leaving until you fight with all your pokemon, if you refuse, then you'll find out what a houndoom's fire can do to humans."

She wasn't being serious, but it sounded impressive. Weak with pain, all of the people released their pokemon. There ended up being three makuhita, two machops, and four meditites. They were all ordered to attack Nightshade. They were in the middle of charging when seven of them suddenly stopped, scowled at their trainers and walked over to Tori, attacking the pokemon that were still trying to get at Nightshade. Those two happened to be a machop and a makuhita, both of which belonged to Brawly. A window smashed and Jay jumped through it, holding the Switch machine in his hand. He pocketed it.

"Well, at least the gym leader's pokemon are treated well. The rest, their old masters don't deserve them." Tori commented, and the duo started throwing pokeballs at the stolen pokemon. Then, the pokeballs vanished, and Jay took his finger from the store button on the pokeball. The two threw off their current clothes to reveal their Apocalypse uniforms.

"The darkness strikes again!" Tori laughed, then she and Jay mounted Nightshade, and made their getaway.

Chapter 16: Progress

Tori and Jay had gotten two hundred 'points' for their success. Once they got 1500 they were allowed to catch a pokemon from the reserve. Recently they had gotten the order to go to Mauville and steal any pokemon from the trainers there. They were dressed in their cover clothes, the same ones as in Dewford. Jay wore a black mask too. everyone just assumed they were some sort of ninja trainer.

"Let's split up, you check the west side of town, i'm checking the east." Tori suggested quietly. Bandit was out this time because Tori had asked him to be. He could smell if a Jenny was coming. Jay nodded,a dn they split up. They both had walky talkies, so it didn't matter where they were. Bandit apparently couldn't smell anyone who had the scent of gym badges on them. Tori sighed.

"Hey Tori, look there!" Bandit said suddenly, pointing with his snout towards a breeding center. Tori obediently walked over and read the sign.

Selective breeding center

We work with making unique pokemon. It was discovered a while ago that it is indeed possible for two pokemon of around the same size to breed, even if one was a fire type and the other a water type. Through genetic insemination, we have created pokemon crossbreeds that would never usually happen in the wild.

The next bit was written in chalk.

Our current pokemon available for adoption- Eevees with kadabra and noctowl genes. Bred to be good for contests, battles, and domestic life!

"I disapprove of insemination. The pokemon can't even choose who they have as a mate!" Tori hissed. "But there's nothing wrong with the eevee kits. Let's have a look."

And so she peeped in. There was a large female eevee resting on a cushion in a pen. Four average sized eevees were next to her. Two of them were golden, with silver manes. The other two were the normal colour, but had small brown wings the size of pidgey wings. There was a male and female golden one, and a male and female winged one. Tori looked at the price tags.

"Great Lugia! No wonder they haven't been bought yet!" Tori exclaimed. "Right, Bandit?" The raccoon didn't reply. She looked at him. Bandit was staring at one of the eevees with a curious misty look to his eyes.

"Should we nick one?" He asked.

"Heck yes. Which one, do you think?" Tori replied.

"Erm... that brown winged one there, she looks confident." Bandit suggested casually. Tori looked at the eevve pointed out. It was the one he had been staring at.

"Okay then." Tori said cheerfully, but only loud enough for Bandit to hear. He seemed relieved. "C'mon, let's pretend we want to see which one to buy." And so they walked in, and over to the pen.

"Hello." said the lady who seemed to be in charge... of course, she was the only one there. "How can I help you?"

"I've taken a liking to these eevees, I just need to decide who would be best to take on a training journey. Any recomendations?" Tori asked.

"Well, most of them seemingly don't like to fight. But that blue eyed one with wings won't stop trying to play fight with her siblings. She always beats them, and since she's been here for so long she raised herself to level 25. She needs to get a trainer. Perhaps you should get to know her." Said the lady.

"I told you she seemed the right one." Bandit said proudly.

"Oh, hush you." Tori told her pokemon.

"You can understand it?" The lady said with surprise.

"I have a translator. Don't you?" Tori asked. The lady shook her head. Tori shrugged and walked over to the pen.

"Hey," Tori greeted, poking the one they wanted through the bars. She jumped and turned around, her clear blue eyes wide with curiousity. Tori had kneeled down.

"Hello. Who are you?" She asked.

"She's not gonna understand you." Called the gold male.

"Well, actually, I can, because i've got a human thing called a translator."Tori told them. The blue eyed one looked awed.

"That's cool. Are you going to buy someone? I'm bored, no one will buy me. Mum says it's because we're too expensive." She rambled.

"Tori is a trainer, but she's also a thief in a team called Apocalypse, they want to rule the world and help pokemon be treated better. She doesn't have enough money to buy you, so we're gonna take you without paying. if you want to come, of course." Bandit told her, jumping down off of Tori's shoulder. On closer inspection, the eevee had a gold star like the ones on kadabra on her mane.

"You're a trainer? And a thief? I don't really care what you are, as long as I can get out of here and fight!" She announced, eyes flashing dangerously.

"Don't worry, you will. Anyway, this is Bandit and i'm Tori. Do you have a name?" Tori asked.

"I learned that umbreon are night pokemon, and espeon are day pokemon. Because i'm the only one who's psychic here, and I want to be a umbreon, I named myself. My name's Equina, like equinox." Equina replied.

"Nice name. Anyway, we've got a plan. Wait a second," Tori told her, then stood up and addressed the lady. "Hi, I was wondering if I could let my pokemon out to see if she gets on with them. Is that okay?" The lady appeared miffed, but nodded. So Tori let out Phoenix and Nightshade. She led them over to the pen. "Equina, this in Nightshade, and this is Phoenix. They'll be your other teammates. You two, this is Equina." Tori introduced loudly. They all nodded, and the little eevee looked up at Nightshade with awe.

"You're a dark type, right? I'm gonna be an umbreon! Hopefully..." Equina exclaimed to Nigtshade, who chuckled.

"Okay guys, listen up. She's too expensive to buy, so we're stealing her. Phoenix, by the door. Don't let the lady escape. Nightshade, whack her on the head so she passes out." Tori whispered to her team, and they immediately sprang into action. It appeared the lady didn't need to be whacke don the head, she passed out at the sight of Nightshade's fangs. Tori grabbed an empty pokeball and threw it at Equina.

"Don't struggle!" Tori warned as the eevve turned into red light. She didn't, and the pokeball was sealed.

"Wait!" Yelled all the other eevee, including the mother. She looked at them, puzzled.

"We'll be in here forever, take us. You don't need to train us, we'll be the pokemon of team Apocathing. We don't like fighting as much as Equina, but we'll do it!" Promised the eevee mother desperately. Tori smiled.

"Okay, now get in these balls and don't struggle."

Soon, the other eevees were in pokeballs, Equina was put in the pokemon section of her bag and the other eevees were placed in the storage system. Tori recalled Phoenix and Nightshade, then existed the shop, darting off into a dark alley.

"Hey, kid!" yelled someone. Tori's head snapped around. She saw two people in the alley, both of them carried the red R. A thin hiss escaped from Bandit. "Give us any money and pokemon you have, pronto!"

"Hello, murderers. You chose a convenient time, you'll make goodpractice for my new pokemon. Send out your, all of them." Tori ordered cooly. They appeared miffed for a second, then obliged and released all of their pokemon. Tori released Equina. "Ready for your first battle, Equina?" The eevee nodded, and glared at the opposing ekans, swablu, and lombre. "Use confusion, repeat." Tori ordered, and her new pokemon began mentally attacking the opponents. the ekans was taking serious damage.

"A psychic and winged eevee! That'll get us a bundle!" Excalimed one of the rockets. Then they stared as their pokemon walke dover to Tori, all signs of aggression gone. Tori calmly stuffed them all into pokeballs and stored them. "She just stole our pokemon!"

"Correction, I rescued them. they will recieve much better care with team Apocalypse. Bandit, Equina, knock them out." The pokemon quickly did just that. "Now we go and give them to the police." Tori said.

"Um, Tori? Can I not go in the pokeball? After being cooped up my whole life, I want to see the world, not just when we battle." Equina asked.

"Sure thing. You can have Bandit's place." Tori said cheerfully, and recalled Bandit. Equina understood, she fluttered up onto Tori's shoulder and sat there. Tori picked up both Rockets and flung them over her shoulder that wasn't occupied by Equina, and carried them to the police station. "hey, these Rockets tried to nick my pokemon. Have them, its not like I want them." Tori called to the Jennies, then dumped the Rockets on the floor and walked away.

She made haste in getting back to her patrol area and find trainers. "Tori, there's trainers there. You're looking for those." Equina informed her, pointing her tail to a pair of trainers who were battling. No one was watching them, which was rather convenient.

"Hey, you two. Send out all your pokemon now!" Tori ordered. "I want to see what you've got." The distraction caused the vulpix that was fighting to stop attacking and look around, and the opponent's teddiursa hit it and knocked it out. The vulpix's trainer walked over to it and kicked it.

"Stupid pokemon!" He yelled. The teddiursa's trainer seemed angry.

"Hey! Don't abuse your pokemon!" He yelled angrily. Tori, meanwhile had pulled off her martial arts suit and activated the switch machine. The teddiursa wasn't affected at all, and the vulpix didn't move because it was fainted. Tori whispered something to Equina, and the vulpix floated over to them. Tori put it in a pokeball and stored it.

"Hey!" Yelled the vulpix's old trainer.

"Equina, relieve that trainer of his pokeballs, don't bother with the other. His pokemon like him too much." Tori ordered. Equina's eyes glowed white, and the abuser's pokeballs flew off his belt and into Tori's storage system. Then his empty pokeballs flew over and went into Tori's item storage system. She was running out of pokeballs. "Thank you for giving Team Apocalypse your pokemon. have a nice day!" Tori laughed, then released Nightshade and rode off on him into a dark alley, in which she put her disguise clothes on.

"I think i'll go raid some more breeding centers." Tori decided, and headed for the place where all of the breeding places had been. Using the same method as before (but this time not getting a pokemon for herself) Tori stripped a breeding center of four growlithe and an arcanine mother. They were all bored too.

"There's some skitties there." Equina pointed out. The place bred cat pokemon, it had a delcatty, persian, and purugly, all of them with three kittens of their pre-evolved form. Tori entered the shop. There were more people here, this would be harder. Tori quickly zipped around, finding out which pokemon wanted to be liberated. all of them except the persian wanted to come, because the persian was loyal to the breeders. So Tori had Equina bash people's heads against the walls while Tori did the same with her fists, knocking them all out. She catnapped the cats, then took off to find Jay.

Jay had succeeded in recovering fourteen pokemon from trainers. Satisfied with their current captures, they headed back to the base, making sure they were not being watched by means of Equina. Jay adored Equina, and requested that he be given the winged male eevee. Tori obediently handed the pokemon over to a highly satisfied Jay.

For their captures that day, they were given 700 points.

Chapter 17: Pairings

It was a week of fairly easy missions before Tori and Jay had enough points to visit the reserve. Jay was hoping to find himself a flying pokemon, Tori was looking for any old pokemon taht she liked.

Tori and Jay explored the reserve seperately. Tori passed many pokemon: shroomish, eevee, meowth, teddiursa... tons of them. She was looking for a pokemon she had an instant liking for. She had fought with no pokemon except Equina recently, so the eevee was now at level 34. Bandit tended to let himself out at night and sleep next to Equina.

All the pokemon were watching her. Tori was watching them, too. So far she hadn't found any she liked that much... she suddenly spotted a flash of russet fur that had used quick attack to appear in front of a tree. Whiplash scars covered it so thoroughly it looked like it had stripes. Tori recognised the Vulpix she had rescued from the trainer in Mauville. It was level 36. Tori coudln't explain it, but she just had a liking for that pokemon, she had a certain shine to her.

"Hello, remember me?" Tori asked the vulpix. She nodded slightly.

"Faintly, I remember your voice as I slid into darkness." The vulpix replied.

"I was the one who brought you here. Now I ask you if you would like to come with me." Tori replied.

"I will battle you, for that is the tradition here, is it not? It shall be one on one, for numbers are not strength compared to spirit. That is what the others here say." The vulpix said softly, then walked forward.

"I'll fight this time!" Bandit cried, materialising out of his pokeball. He gave Equina a quick nod before hopping into a battle stance. Equina removed herself form Tori's shoulder and sat next to her instead.

"Okay then. Bandit, headbutt!" Tori ordered, and the zigzagoon ran forwards in zigzags to attack. The vulpix neatly dodged and blew small sparks of fire on him, namely an ember attack. "Tail whip then pin missile!" Tori yelled, knowing the latter attack would ahve much affect on the vulpix but might distract her for a while. Bandit quickly obeyed, both of the attacks hitting their mark and causing the vulpix some amount of damage. Next, the vulpix sent out a flamethrower, which Bandit dodged hastily.

Suddenly he noticed that the attack was about to hit Equina, and jumped back where he was and took the hit. Equina seemed both releived and highly shocked, and the shade of white she glowed next seemed to signify it. She grew quite a bit, and when the light faded Tori was expecting to see an espeon, not an umbreon.

"The sunlight is fake." Equina explaiend, looking quite content. Bandit seemed to be pouting, then he relaxed and began to glow too. He grew to a moderate sized linoone, quite the same size as Equina.

"You were waiting all this time for her to evolve?" Tori asked incredulously. Bandit simply nodded.

"Erm... okay... Bandit, slash!" And her new linoone dashed forward at incredible speed, slashing the vulpix quite effectively. "Water pulse!"

And it was over. Tori threw the pokeball with pride.

-------------

"Hey. Catch anything?" Tori asked Jay as she met him.

"Yeah, I caught this high level swablu. His name's Stratous. You?"

"A vulpix, I don't know if she has a name. Equina and bandit evolved in the process. C'mon, let's go to our room and feed the pokemon."

-------------

This time, Tori prepared the food rather differently. For one thing, there was a bowl with a mix of dark/psychic/flying food in it, and another with pure fire pokemon food. Tori released Nightshade first, who glanced at the new food bowl with puzzlement. Equina and Bandit, of course, were not surprised. Phoenix shot a suspicious glance at the extra food bowl, but didn't seem as concerned about it as Nightshade.

Did she catch a growlithe? Do I have some other dog for a rival? He was thinking desperately. When Tori released the pokemon in question, Nightshade noticed three things. One, it was a vulpix, two it was female, and three... she was very pretty. The vulpix was looking at him in awe.

"You're large. Am I right to assume that's because this trainer is good?" She commented.

"Erm, yes." Nightshade replied, then plunged his muzzle into the food bowl.

"Hey, I forgot to ask, you have a name?" Tori asked.

"My name is Whisper." She answered before following Nightshade's example and completely devouring her food even quicker than the large dark pokemon. "I was wondering, Tori, if there are any fire stones around." Whisper asked.

"Here, you can consult an admin to get an evolution stone. But why? Do you want to evolve so soon?" Tori questioned.

"If I use the stone, my scars will disappear and all ties to my previous human will vanish. There is good in that." Whisper replied.

"I'll ask them tommorow. For now, just get to know the team." Tori promised. Whisper glanced at Nightshade. She'd get to know them alright...

------------

"Nightshade's been acting really weirdly." Tori commented, watching The huge hound sit with a vacant expression on his face.

"Maybe he doesn't like Whisper." Jay suggested.

"Maybe." Tori replied, unconvinced. Meanwhile she just watched as Phoenix and Equina sparred and Whisper watched. Tori saw that occasioanlly, Nightshade or Whisper would glance at each other, no emotion clear in that look, but their eyes alaways missed each other's and their gaze flicked away as soon as it was thrown. Nightshade's behavior was certainly caused by Whisper...

-------------

After Phoenix and Equina had finished their match (it had been a draw, Phoenix's higher level vs Equina's vast attack range) they were healed with potions. Equina promptly challenged Whisper to a fight and Phoenix dueled Nightshade. Equina and Phoenix won their matches, there was clearly something on the minds of the two that had lost. Phoenix began a conversation with Stratous, Jay's new swablu, and Equina proceeded to talk with Bandit. Even the two dogs were holding a quiet conversation.

Tori sighed. It was quite obvious Equina and Bandit had a thing for each other but she hoped not too many of her pokemon started finding mates, else she would quickly become buried in a torrent of pokemon eggs.

Chapter 18: Always complicated

It seemed Tori would be buried in a torrent of pokemon eggs after all. Apparently it didn't take pokemon much to get attracted to each other, since Nightshade and Whisper were already on friendly lick terms and Phoenix and Stratous kept on boasting, the avian show of courtship. It was courtship because each aimed to impress the other with their boasts.

"You know what I like the most about being a criminal?" Tori asked Jay.

"I dunno, what?" Jay replied, the little male winged eevee (Storm) sitting on his lap. Both of them were enjoying an evening break.

"Our pokemon can learn up to ten moves and we can carry as many pokemon as we want. Those damn restrictions are just laws, and who obeys law when you hang with the thieves?" Jay sniggered a bit at her reply.

"Yeah, and if your pokemon over breed you won't have to dump them in the reserve to be caught." He laughed. Tori suddenly had a strong desire to whack him, but overcame it. "But you know, we're still missing something."

"Hm?" Tori asked.

"A team name. The team usually names itself after the pokemon kept out of the pokeball, but we dpn't really know what Equina is so we can't call ourselves team Umbreon. Sure, it sounds cool, but..."

"Yeah, I get your point. What if Equina turns out to be some new species altogether?" Tori agreed, then she sighed and slumped back further in her armchair.

------------

The next morning, the phone in Tori and Jay's suite rang. Jay collected it, because Tori was brushing her teeth.

"Hello Jay." Said the person. It was Admin Neal.

"Sir." Confirmed Jay.

"You and your partner have been assigned your first important mission. We ahve recently received word of an isolated lab working on new eevee evolutions. Such experiments usually hurt the pokemon so a group of high rank grunts, including you and your partner, have been selected the go and liberate those pokemon. Meet the group in the escape room." The escape room was the room which held the concealed lift taht brought them to the cliff top.

"Yes sir." Jay agreed, and Neal disappeared from the screen.

"Who was it?" Tori asked, after her mouth was no longer fileld with toothpaste.

"Admin Neal. We've been assigned our first big mission, us and some others are off to raid a lab working on new eevee evolutions." Jay answered, taking some healing potions from the Apocalypse 'item bank' which could be used by all members.

"Cool. I wonder if they succeeded." mused Tori, gathering her things.

"I don't know, but we will soon." Jay replied, clipping his swablu's ball to his belt.

-------

Later, seven large shapes took off from a cliff. They were lead by a huge dragonair ridden by Neal. The rest were large flying pokemon like spearow and staraptor. Jay flew on his charizard, and Tori on his fearow. Phoenix still hadn't evolved. All of Tori's pokemon except Whisper and Equina were at level 45, Jay's were all at level 44 except for Statous, who was a level 39.

The lab certainly was isolated, situated in a large cave many miles to the south of Fortree. The only sign of its existance was the light still faintly visible against the dim sky of dawn. (poor people having to get up so early)

Neal made a motion with his hand, which all the grunts had been taught to recognise as 'land'. His orders were quickly carried out and the seven landed out of sight of the lab. Once the flying pokemon had been recalled, another command with the hand was given, telling them to release one of their best pokemon. Tori released Phoenix, Jay released his skarmory (named Steil, pronounced Stayll). Five more pokemon were released, including Neal's flygon.

"Teams raichu and espeon guard the exit and make sure no one escapes! The rest of you, knock out all released pokemon except the eevee evolutions, those you capture. If possible, capture the other pokemon too. Knock out all of the people inside. These are your orders, complete them with style!" Neal ordered, and the team immediately burst into action. Neal's flygon dragonbreathed through the metal door, causing several yelps of alarm from inside.

Tori and Jay ran in, their pokemon flying behind them.

"We are team Apocalypse! Surrender or fight!" Neal ordered. The scientists appeared shocked for a while, until a large number of voltorbs arrived.

"Oh crap. Phoenix, don't let yourself get shocked!" Tori told her pokemon, while Jay gave the same orders to his skarmory. Both were proud pokemon and would not give up because of a type advantage. "Okay, Phoenix, gust attack that one there." Tori ordered, while Blade obediently whacked a voltorb with his glimmering steel wings. Similar things were going on, a few of the... forty voltorb were down, but the things literally covered the floor. This would be a long fight.

As predicted, it was a long fight. Many of the teams selected had been selected because of their flying types, so a lot of the Apocalypse fighters had a disadvantage. While Phoenix had her battles, Tori tried to dodge the exploding voltorb and knock out some scientists. Out of the corner of her eye, Tori saw a thundershock attack hit Blade, then to her horror about three thunderbolts hit Phoenix.

Phoenix was a proud bird, and she would fight to the end. She was the sort who would ignore the futility of things, and continue fighting even if she knew there was no chance. And that was what made her a warrior. That was the case here, Phoenix was struggling to get up with fierce determination adamant in her eyes. She screeched, then began to glow.

Finallyshe was evolving. The pidgeotto became a huge pidgeot, her strength renewed and more. Phoenix shot her a fierce look. Tori understood, Phoenix would fight her battle while Tori fought her own. Tori tensed her martial artist's awareness as Equina fired a psybeam at a voltorb. Tori suddenly saw a flash of white and turned around to confirm it. The head scientist was escaping through the smoke of the explosions, but the odd thing was, he was not heading towards the exit.

"Stay strong, Phoenix!" Tori yelled before running after the scientist. She found him in a room where the sounds of battle were muted to a dull sound of an object being dropped. Equina telepathically confirmed there were no pokemon in this room, in pokeballs or out, but the scientist did not appear frightened at all.

"Greetings, Tori." He said, surprising her.

"How the heck did you know my name?" She demanded.

"I know more than that, Tori. I know all that you are, and all that you will ever be. Do you know who I am?" There was a strange truth in his words that chilled her to the bone, this was no normal scientist.

"Equina, use your telepathy to sense if he is telling lies or not. No, I do not know who you are, except that you are a head scientist here." Tori growled. The scientist chuckled, then his white lab coat seemed to dematerialise and leave new clothes in its place. It was a robe, emeral green and embroided with delicate rings of black, yellow, and red. Rectangular flaps of material glanced from its sides.

"I am what is known as the messenger of a legendary. The legendary pokemon can choose specific humans to be their messengers. It is a great honour, and I have the honour of being the messenger of one of the greatest legendaries. He has told me about you, and your importance in the struggle between light and dark. He has told me what your future will be, and what must occur for you to reach it. For that, I came here." He said.

Tori snorted. "What a load of codswallop, right Equina?" There was no reply. "Right?" When Tori looked round, Equina's clear blue eyes were wide, and she seemed very solemn.

"He speaks truth, Tori. He really is a Messenger... and you really are a Chosen..." Equina blurted. The amn looked at the umbreon sharply.

"Quiet, fool. Do you go against the laws of your gods?" He told her. Equina shook her head then bowed it in respect.

"Equina? I don't understand..."

"Listen to him, Tori. He has soemthing important for you... but I don't know what." Equina told her firmly. So Tori turned to the man questioningly, wondering how important this old amn was. His grey hair was long, it went past his shoulders. The strange things was that it looked like there were two long triangle tipped objects on his head made out of that hair.

"My master has crafted an instrument of magic for you, for without it you cannot be who you are destined to be. Take it." And he handed her a round ubject a lot like a compass in shape, but entirely different. It was amde out of real emerald, and instead of glass at its top it had transparent crystal which cast rainbow glitters of light onto the symbol below it. There were thirteen symbols:

A plain circle, lightning bolt, water drop, fire, moon, sun, feather, a tombstone, ice crystal, leaf, poison barb, sword, and a bag of sand. They were all in their respective colours, like blue for the water droplet and purple for the poison barb, but all of those colours seemed to be composed of different gemstones. There was a pointer inside made of jet, and with a silver knob on the side of the device she could turn it to the symbols.

"Listen to me, there is a line in the back of it, you must either deposit one of your hairs or a drop of your blood into it. The consequenses may... surprise you but will be rewarding in the end. You may use the instrument until you figure out how to use its power mentally. Equina, child, make sure she obeys my instructions and look after her. Farewell." And the old amn literally disappeared.

"Tori! Do as he says now!" Equina ordered her.

"What?" tori asked, surprised.

"Do it now or i'll psybeam you!" Equina snapped. Bewildered, Tori plucked one of the hairs from her head and placed it in the thin indent in the back of the instrument. Semi transparent emerald sealed it over, and the thing flashed a gright green for an instant before an excruciating pain soared through Tori's entire body.

What will happen? Who the heck was that old geezer? Wait for the next chapter to find out!

Chapter 19: The new beginning

The pain continued to run through her every vein like liquid fire, and Equina hastily jumped off her shoulder when small sparks of electricity crackled around her. Then it felt like scalding hold water was running with the fire in her veins, it hurt so much. She suddenly howled, a inhuman howl of pain as her skull seemed to atomise into a million tiny fragments, her limbs and spine did this too. Ever broken a bone and thought it hurt? Try shattering all of them into miniscule pieces!

That was what was happening to Tori now. The particles of her leg bones and muscles rearranged into a different shape, and gravity forced her onto all fours as her legs suddenly became unsuitable for a biped. Her skull also changed shape very painfully, creating a long muzzle and turned her teeth into fangs. The skin on her face stretched to cover the new skull, and her nose promptly disappeared with a rather unpleasant feeling. That unpleasant feeling next targeted her chest as it quickly became flat.

A new nose formed at the end of the muzzle, a sharp one through which many new smells went. Her ears changed position and elongated. Then, shockingly, a large T.A.I.L grew from her tailbone, making her writhe in pain. Then, she had a feeling of being compacted by invisible hands and shrunk into something much smaller. Tiny claws grew inside her feet...paws.

Then, it stopped. "EEVEE?!" Tori yelled, grimacing at her words. She paused, and tried to switch language. "VAPOREON?!" Nope, wrong again. "AETHREON?!" Argh, wrong AGAIN. "WHAT THE HECK?!" Ah, that was better.

"Shut up Tori!" Equina hissed, jumping towards her. "You're a pokemon, that's what. You're an eevee but can use the languages of other types, weird."

"How wonderful." Tori said to her sarcastically in eevee. She turned over her left leg, the emerald thing was practically part of her flesh there. Her belt with her pokeballs had outgrown her and was sitting on the floor.

"You could make it invisible, if you were a dark type." Equina said regretfully. Tori hissed a bit.

Man, I could use a dark type now... She thought grimly, feeling an odd tingly feeling in her body for an instant.

"What in the name of Lugia..." Equina breathed.

"Umbre?" Tori asked, meaning "What?"

"You turned into a damn umbreon Tori!" Equina exclaimed, then she grabbed the belt in her mouth and made Tori step into it. After that, Equina bit and pulled on the bit of loose strap and the belt tightened considerably to fit around her waist. "Okay, here goes..." Equina muttered, and the objects turned slightly black. "They're invisible to all but dark types now. You'd better recall me or they'll be sending me to the reserve." Tori sat up and tapped the button on Equina's ball. She disappeared into it.

Tori then ran at the door, tackling it. She wondered what level she was because this door was considerably harder to break than it had been as a human. But nevertheless, she got it open and ran through to where voltorbs were still exploding. She suddenly saw out of the corner of her still-amber eyes someone knock a syringe filled with blood from a rack, and it flew through the air and landed in someone's arm. That someone appeared to be Jay as he fell to the floor in pain, and Tori shuddered in horror as he appeared to be taking the same transformationa s she had. She quickly ran over to him and relieved him of his belt, putting it on. Now, how did Equina do this? And after much concentration the belt disappeared.

"Steil, Phoenix!" Tori yelled in pokemon language. A roughed up skarmory and a battle worn pidgeot appeared, just to stare at the umbreon and fur-growing Jay. "We both had accidents and turned into pokemon, but I've got your pokeballs so get in before someone sends you to the reserve!" Tori told them. They nodded and Tori tapped the buttons on their pokeballs. Tori proceeded to fetch her Apocalypse uniform and Jays as he grew out of it and put it in her fairly empty backpack. She carried a backpack, Jay didn't. Tori took the Switch Machine from his pocket adn took the pokedex too, then put them in with her valubles too. Then she put on the backpack and made that become invisible.

She looked at Jay himself. His transformation had completed, and it had evidently been more nasty than hers because he was unconcious. He was blue, sky blue. He had white markings around his eyes and had equally white stripes. The tips of his triangualar, remarkably catlike ears were tipped with white, and from under his muzzle down his chest, under his belly, to his tail was white fur. He had pure white wings folded against his back and a big cluster of feathers at the end of his tail too.

That was all the observation Tori could make before she saw two pokeballs fly towards them.

------------

Tori awoke in the reserve next to Jay. It was definately him because it smelt like him. Tori looked frantically at her back then sighed in relief as she noticed all of the disappeared objects were still there. Tori glanced at Jay, then whacked his head with her black umbreon paw.

"Ow!" he yelled, but Tori could tell it wasn't in human because it seemed to have an echo in the same tone that said 'Thre!"

"Get up, Jay. There's a serious matter to discuss." Tori hissed.

"I had the weirdest dream that I turned into a pokemon." Jay said sleepily, yawning.

"It wasn't a dream you dolt! You are a pokemon and so am I!" She growled, whacking him again. He jumped to his four feet.

"Great Lugia I really am!" Tori glared at him. "And, er, you are too." he pointed out.

"Great observation. Now be quiet, I want to test something." She growled, then thought: Heck, a psychic type would be useful now.

"How the heck did you do that?!" Jay yelled.

"So it worked? What am I?" Tori asked curiously.

"Espeon." Jay answered.

"Hmm, I thought so. Now, let's have a look at this evil little bugger." Tori said, turning over her left leg to inspect the emerald device that had no doubt done this to her. The pointer was currently on the sun. Tori extended a claw and pushed the pointer to the water droplet.

"WHAT are you doing? Why the heck..." He trailed off.

"Why the heck everything, huh?" Tori sighed, inspecting her paw. "I'm vaporeon, right?" Tori asked.

"Yeah. I don't know what I am, though." Jay replied.

"I'm pretty sure you're Aethreon, one of the new eevee evolutions designed in that lab. It's a flying type." Tori guessed.

"Well, if i'm going to be a pokemon I might as well be my favourite type." Jay joked glumly.

"Shut up. Now, I want you to think that a psychic type would be useful now." Tori said, promptly turning into an espeon. Jay seemed to be thinking about something, but nothing happened. "Ah well, worth a shot. It's what I did to change. Maybe since I got the compass thing and you got DNA you can only take one form." Tori observed.

"The what?" Jay questioned. Tori turned over her left leg and showed the emerald thing to him.

"Some old coot claiming to be a messenger of a legendary gave it to me, and told me to put one of my hairs in the back. Then I turned into a pokemon. I saw how you changed- someone knocked a syringe filled with blood into you accidentally. And don't worry, I saved our stuff." Tori made the objects reappear for a second before blinking them out of sight again. She didn't know how she did it when she wasn't an umbreon, but oh well. Tori suddenly had an idea.

Being a human could be useful now. Tori thought, then suddenly was forced onto two feet. Well, footpaws really. She still was covered in lilac fur and still had espeon ears pointing out of her long black hair, and a long tail split at the end. But she also had fingers, though covered with fur, and retractable claws in them. Being my full human persona would help now. She looked at herself, and NO FUR!

"Jay, am I completely human?" Tori asked the aethreon. She was surprised at how big he was, quite easily the largest eeveelution. He was about two times the size of a pidgeotto.

"Yes... how?!" He exclaimed, still in aethreon language.

"Since it was only part of your blood changed... you should be able to do it too. Just think that taking on your full human persona would be useful now." Tori told him, finding it much more easy to talk in human. Thankfully, for some reason she was fully clothed, under closer inspection her Apocalypse uniform was no longe rin her bag but on her person. She barely had time to relaise this before Jay suddenly grew back into a human, his fur changing into his Apocalypse clothes as tehy disappeared from her bag.

"Well that helps. I think we'd better go tell Eclipse about this." Tori commented, and Jay found himself able to agree in human language.

And so they walked from the reserve.

Chapter 20: Revelations

"I see. And is there any proof to tell me you are not insane?" Eclipse asked them after they explained their absense. Obviously she thought it the lamest excuse for skipping out on duties.

For proof, Tori turned into a Leafeon and Jay into an Aethreon. For once, Eclipse looked quite surprised.

"I think that is proof enough. Now change back, we need to find out if you are pokemon or human. Come."

--------------

The both of them had had DNA samples taken from them in the form of blood.

"We have results." Proclaimed one scientist. Eclipse walked over to him.

"Yes?" She asked.

"Tori is mostly pokemon, the DNA of psychic, dark, water, electric, fire, grass, ice, ground, steel, flying, poison, normal, and ghost are in her bloodstream, but also clear DNA of a human. The boy appears to be half flying type and half human." The scientist reported. Tori was shcoked. She would ahve to see what all those types looked like.

"Is it reversable?" Eclipse asked.

"I'm afraid not. It would be if new cells had been created, but it seems all cells that are pokemon have actually changed from human cells, so if we extracted them these two would end up horribly deformed." The scientist replied.

"Well, there you hsve it." Eclipse told them, seeming quite sympathetic.

"It does seem a bit weird that i'm no longer human, but if I can learn to use attacks as a human then I'd be one heck of a martial artist. Problem is, if I battle with myself and the pokedexes say: 'Pokemon unknown, subject identified as pokemon trainer Tori of Oldale town' I doubt it would be very efficent." Tori mused.

"That and the fact the police now have a new way to arrest us. We can be captured." Jay added.

"Maybe we should capture ourselves and keep the pokeball with us. Then no other pokeballs except Apoclaypse ones will work." Tori suggested.

"Good idea, maybe sometime we could practice escaping from pokeballs just in case. If that's okay with you, my lady." Jay added to Eclipse.

"Perfectly. Now you amy return to your rooms." Eclipse replied.

"Before we do, I think we have a team name." Tori said, grinning at Jay. "Team Eon."

-----------------

Of course it took a while to explain to their pokemon why they smelled like pokemon. In the end, they didn't really care that their masters weren't human, so that helped quite considerably.

"Maybe we should check out those other forms of yours." Jay suggested to Tori. Tori agreed, and decided to test the ghost type.

The ghost type was quite plain. It was a sort of ghostly blue-grey colour, mostly blue. Three crest like things went from between her ears, which were the same shape as Aethreon's, like those on a peacock's head only blue grey with royal blue dots on them. She was surrounded by a ghostly grey aura, and found to her delight that she could walk through walls and everything, everything included floating around. Because of this she assumed her ability in this form was Levitate. Maybe.

She tried the languages she had before she came up with one that seemed to fit for that form. "Crypteon!" Tori announced. So that was that pokemon named.

Next, she tried the ground type. This one was beige. It had straw yellow paws and a golden chest and belly. It had dark beige stripes the same sort of shape as Aethreon's stripes, and had dark beige markings around its eyes. The tips of the ears, also the same shape as Aethreon's, were tipped with the same colour as the stripes, and chocolate brown tufts of hair went from their ends. Her tailw as long and very very bushy, its underside also golden.

Like the mane of a hyena, she had a chocolate brown mane running down her back. This one was called Praireon.

The next to test was the poison type. This one was the same purple as an arbok, with odd shaped spiky ears. (this one is damn hard to describe) It had honey golden markings around its eyes, with a speckle of the same colour above each of them and one of those specles between the two eyes. Her muzzle was the same colour as the markings, and her throat, chest, belly, and underside of her tail was the same colour. She was dotted from head to tail with honey golden speckles, the five digit paws completely covered with this colour. On the end of her tail was a hard object identical to the shape of the ears, but since it was hard it was also sharp and Tori could feel venom inside it waiting to be used with a poison tail attack.

The tail blade was golden, not honey golden, but the colour of gold. This one was named Toxeon.

Next was one that turned out to be a favourite of hers.

It was like an Eon version of lairon on a way. Her fur was the same colour as thae blackish colour of the parts of a lairon not covered by armour. She too in this form had plates of silver armour reaching down her back. Her eyes were not covered by the armour plate on her head, but only just. on either side of the head plate of armour there was a small bit removed so her long ears would not be rubbe don by the metal. The ears themselves were the same hape as a flareon's, but at the end they split into two points similar to how the tail of an espeon went. Above each of her four paws was a steel band, like a metal wristband. her claws were long and clearly metal.

Along her tail (which was longer than her body) there were four steel bands like those on her paws, and at the end of her tail was a curling blade made of very sharp metal that Tori found was quite flecible and she could move it easily.

This one was Chaleon (pronounced Chay lee on. Aethreon is pronounced Ae three on. Chay and Ae rhyme with pay) and was her favourite form. her other favourite forms were Aethreon, Vapoureon, Crypteon, and Leafeon. She liked the swiftness of her umbreon form, and the amazing strength required by Chaleon to move easily with centimeter thick armour attatched to her body.

There was one bad point to it all though.

In fighting level, she had been over level 60. Becoming a pokemon had zapped that level down to 41. At least she had special abilities now, which currently she could only use in the forms they were naturally learned by. Though in other forms she was gettign better at using foreign attacks, like she could produce small embers as a vaporeon.

But one thing she and Jay revelled in was flying. Granted, Tori found her ability to walk through walls very funny, but nothing could compare to the feeling flying gave her, she felt so free when flying, and knew suddenly why a bird's wings were their msot treasured possessions.

(there will be a link appearing in my Profile to a page where these eeveelutions have been drawn, Toxeon will not be there for quite a while yet.)

------------

So, life in the team continued, their daily routine changed slightly to train themselves as well. It didn't take them long to get enough points to visit the reserve, after th 1000 the big mission had given them. This time team Eon decided not to split up, and in doing so ahd a rather large argument.

When they came face to face with an impressive Aethreon rescued from the lab, both trainers were arguing about who would capture him. The aethreon ahd agreed to a battle, but had watched their 'battle' with mild amusement. It seemed the natural colour for an Aethreon's eyes was amber, that was the colour of this one's eyes. Jay's eyes remained green and Tori's amber.

"But I want it!" Tori snapped.

"You have a gazzilion other forms and I only have the Aethreon form so I think I would be better to train an aethreon!" Jay protested.

Tori sighed and gave in, still glaring a bit.

Predictably, Jay won the battle with the help of his new flying/electric type, which had formerly been one of the eevees from the breeding center and was now a winged jolteon. Tori had also evolved Whisper, and immediately, not having to worry about the different size rule anymore, started getting a bigger relationship with Nightshade. Tori sincerely hoped she would not fall in love with one of her pokemon in the future now that she was a pokemon herself. That would just be... strange.

After Jay had caught his Aethreon and named him Vortex, the team unexpectedly ran into a group of Chaleon living in the mountainous area of the reserve. It seemed they ahd already got themselves a small Clan, with about three adults, two youths, and four babies, which were, oddly enough, baby Chaleon and not eevee. Tori assumed it was something to do with having been created. (Remember the movie Mewtwo Returns? There were baby nidoqueen in it, which should be impossible)

Tori asked them in chaleon if any of them wanted to come with her, and one of the youth males decided to battle her. Tori after assessing that he was level 39, turned into a Vaporeon to battle him herself.

Tori started off with a quick water gun, and the chaleon appeared to take quite a bit of damage before he shook of the water and jumped towards her, his entire blade glowing in what could only be iron tail. Tori dodged, but only just. The tip of the blade worke dits way over her shoulder, making a thin cut which bled very slightly. Tori's eyes glowed as she fired a bubblebeam at her opponent, which he tried to dodge but could not because of how many of the bubbles there were.

Tori eventually managed, to her joy, to produce a flamethrower as a vaporeon that knocked out the chaleon. Predictably, she changed back into a human and threw the pokeball.

-------

She named the chaleon Blade.

Chapter 21: Bad luck

The Sueism ends!

It was at Lilycove that Tori's amazing luck ran out. She and Jay had gone up a few levels, and their growth seemed unusually slow for a pokemon's. They took many more battles to level up than pokemon usually did, which wasn't exactly helpful. What was helpful was that she could use weak attacks now in her human form, like she could pull of a thunderpunch or a firepunch. She could also float and walk through walls, as well as use photosynthesis to get energy and make items disappear.

Tori had not confiscated any pokemon yet, Jay was having better luck than her by far. Tori sighed, and pulled up her jeans a bit. She was disguised in casual trainer wear with the typical mask of an Apocalypse, which was black and thus not very distinctive. Unfortunately, what was distinctive was her smell to other sharp-nosed pokemon, as she soon found out.

Tori heard barking, howling, cheering, shouting. She smelt humans and police clothes and fire and firestone. Oh dear.

About thirty growlithes and their Jennys appeared through a few of the alleys. Oh dear indeed. Tori looked to another alley, only to see some more growlithes pouring down it. A thinner layer of the dogs walled all of her escape exits.

"Shit." Tori muttered, before reaching into her pocket and pushing the button on a pokeball. Quickly, unseen, she took that pokeball and clipped it to the invisible belt, and it disappeared too. "Okay Phoenix, get us a nice dust cloud please." Tori ordered the pidgeot. She did as ordered, and in the mean time Tori released all her other pokemon and ordered them to attack the thin layer of growlithe, she herself using some attacks before the dust cleared.

Four growlithe were unconcious and three injured rather badly, others had minor wounds. But there was no gaps through which to escape. Tori cursed under her breath. "So, what the heck are you here for?" Tori asked loudly, as her pokemon responded to a series of telepathical commands, and Tori used her own mild telepathy to deal damage to a few growlithes, weak ones.

"The police have been unable to find you for the past months, but our growlithe found your scent in this city. You are under arrest, please come quietly." Said a high ranked member of the Jennys.

"Oh come on, how many known criminals have actually 'come quietly'? I'm certainly not going to be the breaker of that...ah... tradition." Tori replied, smirking as her pokemon attacked again. Telepathic communication really was useful. Tori found comfort in the fact that all of her important things, like her Switch Machine, Super styler, and pokemon's pokeballs were on her belt, along with her own pokeball.

"Your pokemon are disobedient." pointed out the Jenny smugly.

"Oh no. You see, it's something called telepathy, idiots. Equina, my psychic umbreon helps me with that." This wasn't entirely true, but she didn't want them thinking that she was a psychic on her own.

With a huge combo attack using the power of all of her pokemon, about thirty growlithe were taken down, leaving about twenty five. Unfortunately... the type matchup was too much for untrained Blade, and he had long since fainted. Tori frowned, then used dark/psychic energy combined to levitate him over to his pokeball and place him inside, a movement no one else saw because she had vanished him with darkness. This was obviously a surprise for the Jennys.

And, crud of hells, Bandit was the next to go down from one heck of a flamethrower combo which even his water pulse couldn't combat. Not good. Obviously, Nightshade and Whisper, who was officially a ninetales, were not getting very affected. But then, their special attacks weren't much of a contribution anyway.

But it didn't matter. The growlithe were defeated. What she was NOT expecting was for the Jennys to grin, then watch as about thirty arcanine appeared, all of them level 50. Oh crap. Double crap.

As expected, the fight was over before it began. Tori put up an invisible protect and Light screen barrier as she was knocked out, steadying the invisibility of her valubles.

---------

When she woke up, about forty Jennys, Professor Birch, her foster parents, and a pile of guns were waiting. She could still see her stuff around her waist, good. nothing was missing, not even her backpack. Her Protect attack was still there.

"WELL? YOU GOT ANYTHING TO SAY FOR YOURSELF MISSY?" Demanded her foster mother.

"Please be quiet, a police interrogation is nescessary now." Ordered a jenny.

"Go on then, I am low on my patience supply." Tori told them with no MILD irritation in her voice.

"The growlithe report your scent as not being completely human. Could you expand on this? A sheild was preventing us from taking one of your hairs or something..." Birch reported.

"How observant of them. Well, I'm answering. My DNA was mixed with that of a pokemon. And no, you amy not experiment on me otherwise i'll psybeam you." Tori replied, throwing a glance at her left wrist on which she always wore white gloves, and the Evogem (as she called it) was embeded in her skin underneath it.

"Scientific reports prove mixture of human DNA with that of a pokemon is impossible." Birch argued.

"Really? That must have been some weirdly altered DNA... then again, it was of a man made species so maybe it was unstable or something." Tori chewed her lower lip thoughtfully.

"Please give us a valid answer."

"I gave you my answer. I don't have another one. Either say another question or vanish for me. I daresay I prefer the latter... amybe I could assist you in that department." Tori replied, glaring.

"Where have you been for the past months?"

"You really think i'm gonna tell you where I hide? You're dumber than you look. Now, if you'll excuse me..." Tori walked over to the window, which had a cool breeze drifting through its iron bars. It was too small for a human to get through. Ah well, she's wanted a more dramatic exit anyway. Tori's eyes glowed, and she promptly walked through the wall and disappeared as ghosts tend to do.

---------

Tori nervously floated, invisible, back to HQ. She knew she would get rather horribly told off. Tori flashed her ID to the treeguard and entered the cave. Teleportation was still beyond her level of skill. As predicted, barely had she entered the sector her suite was in before...

"TORI!" Exploded Jay, suddenly appearing with a combined look of worry, relief, shock, wonder, confusion and rage. It was the last that suddenly filled her with the urge to sit in a wall and wait till he went away.

"Argh." Said Tori as a powerful headache revealed itself when he yelled.

"Where in the name of Lugia WERE you?!" He growled, not really noticing he was speaking in a mix between Aethreon and English.

"Yes, Tori, where were you?" Asked a calm, cool voice which was too familiar for Tori's liking. Jay had made her want to run away for a while... this one made her feel like she should run off the team and get eaten by Groudon. Eclipse wore her usual stony expression.

"I...erm...got arrested. They brought in the arcanines. But don't worry, I used protect so they got no where near me to see the Apocalypse stuff." Tori added hastily.

"So, the Jennys finally started using strong pokemon. How did you escape?" Eclipse mused.

"I walked through the wall." Tori replied nervously.

"Hmmm, not bad. Though you will still have to make up for your failure, tommorow you will go on a very challenging mission without Jay's help, he will be on patrol. If you screw up then, you will descend in rank. Await more detail tommorow morning." Eclipse said, then walked off.

Dun dun dun! What will her mission be? Chapter 22: Big problems

The adventure continues..

Tori, finding it inconveniently hard to sleep, had gotten up at dawn after a short nap, unable to get back to sleep again. Jay, apparently, had already gotten up and left. Tori sighed and released her pokemon, telling them all that they would be having a very challenging mission to complete.

"And you have no idea what it is." Finished Nightshade. Tori nodded.

"In that case, all we can really do is wait for the call." Equina shrugged.

As if on cue, the phone began ringing. Tori dashed hurriedly over to pick it up.

"Tori speaking." Tori announced, waiting for the picture to come up on the screen.

"Leader Eclipse has told me to call you with the explanation of the mission." Said someone's voice as the image flickered onto the screen. It appeared to be one of the admins, a guy named Andrew. Seeing that Tori was fully attentive, he continued. "For uncountable years, latias and latios have been thought of as legendary pokemon, the only of their kind, though records claim that once there were whole flocks of them. Our spies in Team Rocket have learnt that they have received word of an actual flock of the eon pokemon. They plan to raid the flcok and capture them all tonight, when they will be sleeping. Our job will be to take out those team Rockets and defend the pokemon."

"Will we be attempting to capture the pokemon?" Tori asked, slightly thrilled at the chance to see the legendary pokemon.

"No. We will be, however, attempting to take DNA samples from both, so we can study them and learn more about the species." Answered Andrew. "You have the day off to prepare and chill out. This will be a challenging mission because the Rockets will likely be sending powerful members to capture the pokemon. We have reason to believe that thi flock has been in hiding for milleniums, having to always hide and fly around the world. Those of them that lived long enough to become powerful must have already been killed, because the flock seems to have poor defence against attacks. Having to wander all the time, they had no time to become stronger. Such brave pokemon so desperate to escape captivity can never be tamed, and will likely be killed by team Rocket when this becomes apparent. That is what we have to stop." And the admin hung up.

"Ack, what a mission... Okay guys, you heard that. You can go play on the clifftop, don't go more than two miles away or I won't be able to call you back with telepathy." Tori told her pokemon. "I need to get some move practice in as a pokemon... then sleep. Try to be back by six, otherwise you'll miss dinner." The pokemon nodded and waited as Tori put clip-on tags on their ears, tags which said: 'Tori of Team Eon's pokemon, possesses authourisation to move around Apocalypse grounds without trainer.' They were a bright yellow.

"So, what game are we playing?" Equina asked Bandit, walking with all the others towards the door.

"So, what will we be using as our method of passing time?" Whisper asked Nightshade.

Tori's face paled as she could have sworn she saw suggestive grins on the faces of Bandit and Nightshade. Blade and Phoenix watched them with a look of contempt.

"While they're off having 'fun' with their partners, perhaps we will actually do something worthwhile." Phoenix remarked.

"Like train? In your spare time? We already have times reserved for training. Ach, I wish there was more chance of finding eeveelutions in that clifftop forest... maybe i'll go hang out in the reserve." Blade muttered, and darted out of the door. Phoenix turned her head to Tori.

"You know, I think i'm the only one of these idiots who can control the desires brought with mating season." She sighed before flying out the door.

Oh crud, it's mating season? Well, it doesn't seem to affect me, so I should be fine. Tori thought to herself, before Morphing into Vaporeon and practicing water guns by trying to fill as much of a large basin in one breath as she could. She also worked on accuracy, shooting bullet seeds then trying to hit them in midair with small sparks of fire, namely ember. unfortunately, she managed to set the wall on fire many times by missing her target, resulting in a need of a small well-aimed water projectile to douse it, then psychic powers to help regenerate the burnt wall. So really, it was practice for a lot of elements.

POV change

About three hours later, Jay walked into the room and was confronted with an espeon sitting on the ceilling looking very strained. There was a wet path on the floor below, which Jay quickly identified as sweat with his new sense of smell. Tori seemed startled at his sudden entry and fell off the ceilling. She morphed into a human and stood up, brushing her hair out of her face.

"Sorry 'bout that, i'm practicing my telekinetic abilities, and hell is it hard. I thought of a good excercise for it, it's very challenging but tends to knock me out pretty quickly. I try to concentrate my psychic ability on my feet to fuse myself to a wal, and use that as a suction thingy to walk off it. Trying to sit on the ceilling is way harder, since you have to distribute your energy equally around your points of contact with the roof, but I can't do that very well and keep falling off and banging my head. That knocks me out, but this time I luckily landed on my back." Tori explained, sounding quite exasperated.

"Shouldn't you be on that mission?" Jay asked.

"It doesn't start until eight this evening..." Tori replied dazedly, swaying a bit on her feet.

"Are you okay?" Jay questioned concernedly.

"Yeahhh I'm fi..." Tori didn't get to complete her sentence as exhaustion conquered her and she promptly began falling over, her eyes closing as she passed out. Jay thought fast and used quick attack to be there in time to catch her. He was suprised at how light she was, not nearly the healthy weight for someone around her height and size. As Jay moved his hands slightly to support her he gasped, feeling her ribs even through her clothes. What has she been doing?! Has she even been eating at all? Jay thought to himself, staring with disbelief at her face. She looked so exhausted, and Jay was sure she was tougher than that. he was sure that for whatever cause she was so thin, was linked to how easily she overexerted herself.

Suddenly, Jay became aware of how close she was to him, and felt himself suddenly blush. He quickly set her down on the armchair and dashed off to fetch a wet cloth and a super potion. When he had got them, he sat on the arm of the armchair and placed the cool cloth on her forehead. While looking at her, Jay suddenly shuddered involuntarily as an unknown emotion washed over him. It definately wasn't love, he knew what that felt like. He had also felt hatred before, and it wasn't that. As for grief and sorrow... he knew all too well what that felt like.

He felt himself move towards Tori, then tried to hold himself back, feeling for some reason that he had to eliminate this thing clogging this senses. He stood for a second, fighting with the thing and at the same time trying to find out what it was. In his probing of the emotion, he suddenly got caught up in it, and his resistance was broken down as he began walking over to Tori. Now that he was being controlled by this emotion, he could pinpoint what it was. An overwhelming passion, instinct, desire... to mate.

As soon as he realised this, he knew instantly that it was his pokemon half's instincts. He also knew what would happen if he reached Tori. No! I can't... damn instincts! Tori will never forgive me if I can't stop this... Jay summoned up every scrap of his willpower and defiance and used it as a shield and sword to defend against the desire and then drive it away, fighting a difficult battle in his head, knowing that the enemy was as powerful as he was.

Jay eventually drove the most of the instinct and desire away, but was unable to prevent a small amount of it leak past his defences, and closed the difference between himself and Tori, then took her hand. He froze as Tori's eyes flickered open, then darted to stare at him in shock. "Why are you holding my hand?" Tori asked, clear confusion in her voice.

"I er...um, am about to use this super potion, and they sting, so you would need some sort of appendage to destroy when it woke you up..." Jay replied, trying to say it with an edge of humour.

"Oh...right... well, go on then." Tori replied, confusion still in her voice. Jay was sure she had noticed the unsure ton eof humour in his voice, and was also certain that the tone of confusion she had used sounded fake. What did she know?

POV change

Tori waited for Jay to spray the potion on her, and winced as the stinging quickly enveloped his body. She clenched her fist instead of Jay's hand to take the pain out on something. She was psychic now, and therefore could not be lied to. She had detected the lie in jay's words, and scanned his mind. He had obviously tried to forget whatever had just occured because she couldn't get a clear signal on his previous thoughts. All she could hear was: No! Dm sticnts... Tori nevr frgive if this... Curious about what she couldn't forgive, she started searching for emotions. She gasped a small gasp at what she first found as the most adamant emotion there.

She saw Jay look puzzled at the sudden gasp of shock and quickly read his current thoughts. Oh crap, does she know? Tori heard, but no more thoughts followed. Do I know what? Tori thought desperately, feeling a bit panicky. She had felt the magnitude of his desire to violate her, and at this she would have normally ran away screaming, but she could sense it was unwanted instinct. But still... the sheer level of that passion and desire scared her, she didn't think any creature could resist that. Exactly how long had she been asleep? Depending on how long, with hsi emotions and thoughts combined Tori might have had to assume that he had done something very unpleasant to her. She was afraid to ask how long she had been out, and so didn't ask.

Now fully energized, Tori shakily got up and walked up the wall, forgettign in her stress to transform, thus making the excercise much harder.

POV change

Jay watched with fascination as she walked up the wall and into a part of the ceilling where there was nothing she might fall on and break, then started to sit down. Jay, as he sat down in his armchair, didn't miss the look of panic, fear, uncertainty, and mistrust that she flashed his way for a second. Suddenly, he felt himself be assaulted by the instinct again, and winced. Tori promptly fell off the ceilling and landed on her back, then lied there with a look of horror and fear on her face. He walked over to her, the action partly fuelled by concern and an impulse to help, and partly by that dreadful instinct. He could see her amber eyes wide open with fear.

"I can...feel it." She whispered to him."Strong...feeling... don't you dare!" The last part she spat out with contempt, her voice sounding a lot scarier than she looked. She was watching him with a grim look on her face, as she gave a small gasp as Jay began shaking all over with the effort to control his instincts and took a step forward, then a step back. The second movement seemed to reassure Tori a bit, but when he took two steps forward, gradually losing the battle, her eyes flew open even wider than they already were, and the strength of the look of horror, desperation, and fear nearly knocked him over. Tori was never that scared!

"Please... don't..." She whispered, passing into unconciousness again as Jay's battle with his emotions continued.

Ooh, the suspense! What will happen? It seems being a pokemon isn't as good as they thought! HAHA, I am getting better at cliffhangers!Chapter 23: Mission

Tori felt a warm energy gushing through her. It had been there for a while now, but her body seemed to be absorbing it before it could help to erase her fatigue. She was exhausted, and finally tried to reach out with the weak tendrils of her mind to grab the healing energy. She sighed inwardly with releif as she caught the energy and used it, finally gaining the strength to open her eyes. She saw figures above her, Nightshade, Phoenix, and Bandit. She suddenly sat up, desperately needing to know what had happened, if Jay had betrayed her or not... The pokemon seemed to sense her question and answered.

"Me, Equina, and Phoenix had come back and used our tag things to get in." Bandit started.

"Bandit's funny, but he's really dumb. He took ages to figure out what was going on." Equina called from the other end of the room.

"We saw Jay strangely close to you." Phoenix remarked. Tori's heart skipped a beat. Had he...?

"He was trembling and sweating, it was really strange. He kept on taking steps forward and back, touching your hand and falling over. Equina read his mind and found out that he was fighting with his new instincts. He really was trying hard, but Equina could sense he was close to breaking." Bandit continued.

"Equina told us what was happening, and told me to restrain him. With my new form, that wasn't very hard." Phoenix added, and Tori noticed that Phoenix seemed a lot larger than before, and parts of her feathers were a fiery crimson.

"Equina used recover on you, then began trying to teach Jay how to clear his mind, so he could have better focus while trying to control his emotions." Bandit said.

"However, he was completely useless and couldn't do it at all, so I got really annoyed and knocked him out." Equina announced from the other end of the room. "Then I called everyone back. Jay didn't take long to wake up, and we've restrained him in the two instinct attacks he'd had since." Jay got up, and even without trying Tori could detect the waves of embarassment he was creating. After what had happened, Tori felt rather uncomfortable with him close to her.

"I know how thin you are, Tori. While potions and Recover might help, in the long run they'll be useless without your immune system to help them. Why are you so underweight?" Jay demanded. How did he know she was thin?

Tori sighed. "Ever since transforming, i've eaten a lot less, becoming full much more quickly. If I try to eat more I throw up, but it seems being full isn't enough for my human body. My new appetite fits a pokemon, not a human, and so I have too small meals." She explained.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Jay asked.

"I didn't want to worry you." Tori murmured, getting up.

"Tori, don't you understand? This is serious, if you don't do something you might eventually die-" Jay was cut off and Tori didn't bother to turn around and find out why, and instead walked into her room. She suddenly heard his gasps, and she shuddered. She glanced at her clock.

"Holy crap! I need to get ready for dinner! My mission starts soon!" Tori exclaimed, wnating an excuse to get the hell out of there and thankful that she had one. She quickly shoved many max potions and revives into her mini storage system, as well as paralys heals, burn heals, etc. When she was finished packing she quickly changed from her training gear (weighted clothes) to her Apocalypse uniform. Then she returned all her pokemon and placed them on her belt, then ran to dinner.

----

Tori didn't return to her room after eating, instead she went to the take-off area on the cliff edge, where admins and high ranked grunts were assembling and releasing large flying pokemon upon which to ride. Following the crowd, she released Phoenix and got on her back. Soon, a line of sixteen were there, not including herself. One stepped forward: Andrew. He seemed to be the mission leader.

"Okay! We're heading out! Follow me on your mounts, and try not to lag behind." He shouted, then climbed onto a flygon. Then they flew. It took well over an hour, and Tori almost fell asleep on Phoenix before she became immersed in her thoughts.

She supposed the mating season emotions weren't affecting her because she had her gem, and it seemed to have been a planned transformation. Jay's transformation had been an accident, so there was nothing holding back those instincts. There was another thing... too.

"Phoenix? When did mating season start?" Tori asked her pokemon.

"Yesterday." Phoenix answered.

"Oh crap." Tori announced quietly.

"I guess you know what that means, huh?" Phoenix asked with a grim smirk on her face.

"Yeah." Tori sighed. "It means that Jay's instincts will only get stronger." At these words, a chill passed through her blood. If he had such trouble controlling it now, what would be to come? Tori suddenly noticed the hand signals Andrew was making. He was saying: 'We are almost there, prepeare to battle'

Tori sent out Equina, who perched on her shoulder, sleek and elegant as always. They were starting to land, and Tori released the rest of her pokemon once she had gotten off Phoenix's back. The next second, red and blue blurrs were zooming about, and Rockets on their steeds after them. These steeds consisted of both flyers and runners. Tori got on Nightshade and ran after the rockets with the other Apocalypses, her pokemon close behind. Soon, the night was alive with trainers calling orders and the cries of pokemon.

"All of you fight as you deem most effective! I can't order you all at the same time!" Tori cried, using a few attacks herslef on the weaker opponents. She snatched a pokeball from a Rocket that Nightshade had jumpe don then released the latios inside, smashing the pokeball underneath her foot, but grabbing a bit of its downy fur before it flew off. All the Apocalypses were dping similar things, chasing after those who had captured the pokemon and attacking. There was so much mess she could hardly tell what was going on. She saw a latias disappear in red light, then she switched steeds to Phoenix, returning Whisper before she did, noticing that she had been knocked out. With Equina's help they were able to release the latias, then Tori flew back down to check on the battle. She had to return Blade and Bandit, cursing whoever had knocked them out.

She couldn't see Nightshade, and followed his scent to try and find him. He seemed to be badly exhausted,a nd so Tori quickly sprayed on a potion.

"Thanks!" Nightshade howled before attacking a small arcanine angrily. It seemed to be low level, and he felled it with a crunch attack.

"Look out! There's a raichu!" Equina called, but too late for Nightshade to avoid getting an electric shock, then ending up trembling and being unable to move as the raichu attacked.

"Crap, I already used my two heals!" Tori groaned before returning Nightshade and firing a mud projectile at the raichu, and then it was quickly assaulted by combined psybeams. Tori grabbed Equina and directed Phoenix above, seeing if there was anything aerial she could assist. Her sharp eyes shooting around, she failed to see something that Phoenix pointed out with her beak: a staraptor flying at a latias and ramming into it, causing the latias to drop something. Phoenix flew into position and caught the object, noting that it was an egg. "Equina, psychic and faint attack that bird!" Tori ordered, creating a warm field around the egg with her psychic powers and fire powers. The latias had darted over to a latios.

"A human has the egg!" It called.

"It's okay, it's her!" The latios replied. "We've done what we were asked to do, now get the flock out of here!"

"HEY! This is yours!" Tori called.

"No! You keep it!" Yelled the latias, a few silver tears falling from her. Suddenly, the latias was captured by a Rocket. Feeling highly angry, Tori put the egg in a pokeball and put it on her belt, then flew after the rocket, noting grimly that it was a salamence she had to fight. She could see that there weren't many Rockets left, this one was one of the last.

The Rocket appeared to be trying to get away while he had the chance. The salamance was fast, and Tori had to chase it far out into the forest, very far away from the others, landing the occasional attack every now and then. The Rocket finally stopped and started fighting back, and she had to give it her all to not be defeated. Phoenix and Equina dodged as many of the attacks as they could, and used protect when that wasn't an option. Unfortunately, Equina's fatigue caught up with her and she dropped from the air, narrowly escaping her death when Tori recalled her. Now they were using the small fire attacks Phoenix knew combined with her wing attacks, which meant it had to be close combat. Because of that, Tori was able to get the occasional attack to the salamence herself.

Suddenly, there was a dragonbreath attack that hit Phoenix dead on. That was it for her, and Tori recalled her, turning into an aethreon to fight the salamence herself. Naturally, this shocked the salamence and rider, which allowed Tori to get a well aimed psybeam to hit. She flew closer, trying to think of her next move. I should try poison sting. I've never used it before... but... Tori burrowed into the depths of her being, and dug into the pit from which she had so far pulled all of her abilities. She found poison sting, and brought it up so she could hold it, ready to use, with all the other techniques she had so far mastered.

Suddenly, she seemed to be holding too much, too many abilities. They suddenly overflowed within her, she couldn't control them! She felt flames fly from her paws, psybeams from her eyes, poison stings and electricity from her mouth. All of them hit, and the effect was devestating, but she was losing control. Using these attacks was rapidly sapping her energy, and suddenly within her was born a terrible pain, as bad as the pain she had felt while transforming. She screamed with the pain, trying to stop the attacks but failing. She saw that the Rocket and Salamence were falling, and looked quite dead, but all she had eyes for was the pokeball falling above. She qucikly swooped over and claimed it, releasing the latias and crushing the charred ball.

She felt the attacks begin to wither, because she no longer had any energy to use them with. She quickly made her items invisible, then the last thing she did was spread out her wings to slow her falling, then she blacked out.

Chapter 24: Fear and Helplessness

More mating season trouble this chapter.

"We looked for her, but couldn't find her or her pokemon, aside from a few feathers and bits of fur." Eclipse explained sadly. Jay clenched his fists.

"I don't care what you say, i'm going to find her!" Jay hissed, getting to his feet and preparing to leave as Eclipse gave a small nod.

"Jay." Eclipse called as Jay opened the door. He turned round, and was shocked to see Eclipse's eyes shimmering, looking quite broken. "Please find her... bring my daughter back."

Tori was taking a while to wake up. I feel like... like i'm trapped in a subconcious world... I feel like I can wake up if i want to, but I don't know how. This... I feel strange... my hindquarters feel warm... but my head is cold. My wings... they hurt. I... A sudden jolt of pain in her abdomen gave her the trigger needed to wake up, and she found a large ninetales there. Tori inhaled air and tasted it, discovering that this ninetales was male. Holy crap! If that's a male, I certainly don't want him that close to me!

She jumped up, snarling. She winced, noticing that the muscles in her wings were torn from being pulled at by the air as she fell. He appeared to be able to guard his mind, so she couldn't read it. The ninetales advanced towards her. "Stay back!" She snarled, lacing her claws with fire and lashing at him. He easily avoided the attack. He didn't seem to get the message, so she used thundershock. It hit, but didn't seem to do much.

They danced in battle formations, attacking and avoiding, deflecting and tackling.

"So, you don't want to be my mate." Observed the ninetales.

"That's right." Tori panted, discovering that she was still weak, and couldn't fight very well.

The ninetales leapt and pinned her down.

"Too bad!" He growled, and reared up, preparing to slam his paws down on her chest.

Tori managed to create an extremely large scream, and saw something small and blue before she blacked out again.

------------

Man, I can't believe that Tori is Eclipse's daughter! No wonder they look similar- Jay's thought's were interrupted by a familiar cream that echoed across the valley. "Tori!" He hissed, and flew in the direction of the noise. he searched for a while in the area where he had heard her, and it was at least an hour before he saw a broken tree, below which was Tori in aethreon form, clearly unconcious. He quickly flapped his wings and swooped down.

He landed and assessed her situation. Her wings were bent in an odd position, and were clearly very swollen. That mean they were either broken or dislocated, or both. She had various gashes all over her body, probably from falling through the tree. She also had burn marks, and her body looked broken and weak. He turned into a human and reached for his storage system, and inspected it. Darn, all I have left is a regular potion. That'll do practically nothing. Oh well, at least she'll probably wake up. She definately won't be able to move, though, and with the look of her legs, moving her might seriously hurt her. I left without any means of contact... so I suppose we'll be staying here until she's mostly healed.

And Jay administered the potion, but Tori didn't wake up. At least it should speed up her healing... Jay got to work, using his claws to slice off branches and get them to the right size, then started building a shelter with the sticks and bushes, moving large rocks to support some parts of the shelter and clawing holes in trees to insert branches into. The sap inside those holes would act as glue, and stick the branches there. He made the shelter extremely large, since he had nothing else to do. He used four large trees altogether on which to support the roof and walls, making the den large enought for eight people to sit in quite comfortably and tall enough to be able to stand up easily.

Jay lined the branches with bracken and thorns, filling in the gaps with leaves. Over the gap in the wall for the door, (which was only big enough for an aethreon sized creature to walk through) he had put very large ferns. There was another hidden exit, which was a point in the wall that could be pushed down. Jay carefully lifted Tori into the shelter, knowing that even such a short distance to move her was dangerous. he suddenly spotted very thick moss in some tree roots, and ran off to collect it. Soon he had got enough for a human sized bed, and used that combined with soft ferns and a few of his feathers to create a bed upon which to put Tori.

To pass the time, Jay got a chunk of wood and chipped away at it to make a bowl, then another. He filled one with berries from a nearby bush, and the other with water from a stream. Then he decided to make himself a bed, and in the middle of this was when Tori regained conciousness.

"Jay...?" She called feebly, smelling him. After a quick assessment of his mind she discovered that he hadn't done anything she should hate him for, quite the opposite really.

"You're too badly injured to be moved, so I made a shelter here in the forest." Jay told her softly, continuing to assemble his bed. He was afraid that if he look at her now, his instincts would attack again.

"Oh... Jay? Did you see a ninetales?" Tori asked.

"A ninetales? No..." Jay replied, puzzled.

"I wonder what that blue thing was then..." Tori mused sleepily, then she suddenly thought of something, releasing the energy making her stuff invisible. she tapped the button on the pokeball she had put the egg in. The red light vanished to reveal broken eggshell and a sleeping baby latios. It suddenly woke, and blinked huge blue eyes at Tori.

"Mother." It announced, and levitated over to turned into a human and stroked the little thing's neck. She glanced over at the flabbergasted Jay.

"Mine." She told him strictly. "The parents gave him to me."

"Okay, fine." Jay sighed, and continued with his work.

"You need a name...I name you Kula." Tori declared, and the latios made happy noises. "Okay Kula, what happened with the ninetales?"

"Mother scared, so Kula help. Barrier." Kula replied.

"Good boy. Jay, throw me some of those berries would you?" Tori called. In reply, he lobbed a few large pecha berries. Tori intended to catch them and give them to Kula, but he beat her to it and devoured the berries. "Okay, you've been fed, so into the pokeball you go." and Kula obediently entered the pokeball.

-----------

Over the next few days, Jay was careful to not look at Tori too much, and so managed to keep his instincts at bay. For this, Tori was very thankful. Jay helped keep her alive, he brought berries for both her and Kula, and Kula sometimes floated with him to help. As long as she wasn't aethreon, her wings weren't a problem.

However, Tori noticed one day that she smelt different. Different, but not strange. The scent was still obviously hers, but different. Judging by the number of male pokemon Jay had ahd to chase away, it was probably pheromones. It seemed that while she wasn't affected by mating season, she still went into heat. Tori could also smell that Jay had a cold, and so couldn't smell those pheromones. It seemed to be a bad one, the sort that would take weeks to go away. So, she was safe.

POV change

Kula returned with about ten berries levitating behind him one day, a sort Jay had never seen before. But they were obviously safe, because Kula promptly consumed two, no questions asked. So, he and Tori had four each. As had become the daily routine, Jay fetched the water for Tori then asked her how she was.

"My arms are fine... I can move them, but I'm not strong enough to use them to fight. AS for my legs... well... I can twitch the left one, but that's about it. They're still pretty swollen and broken." Tori replied. Jay nodded.

"Your potions would give you energy, but they can't heal bones. Same goes for Equina's recover. I suppose we'll just have to wait." Jay sighed, and walked over to his bed. "Sleep well."

----

Jay awoke the next morning and saw Tori's eyes open as always, immersed in thought. He yawned and rubbed his eyes, not feeling very sleepy... mainly because it was midday.

"Great Groudon! You should have woken me up!" Jay yelped, grabbing the water bowl and running off to fetch some water. As he washed his face in the stream, Jay noticed that he could smell again. Well, that helps. He thought cheerfully, and set back with the bowl of water. Kula had probably already got berries for Tori earlier, so there was nothing to worry about there. Jay put down the water by Tori's hand, catching a glimpse of her face and feeling a small, controllable rush of instinct ignite inside him, and he quickly locked it up. I'm getting the instinct thing now just by looking at her? That's not good... I suppose it's more into mating season now, so the instinct would be stronger...

As he sat down on his bed, preparing to continue chipping away at creating a wooden figurine, he smelt an odd scent. He froze, and sniffed harder. Eyes widening, he realised it was Tori. But she smelt different. He looked at her strangely, and felt the small flare of instinct be fired and supressed within him. The scent drowned out all other scents, at first smelling odd. She smelt different, yes. But she also smelt... good.

His pupils thinned and became slits like cat eyes... and let's just say the instincts brought reinforcements. He felt passion flare through his veins, consuming every drop of his blood in fiery desire. He saw Tori's eyes snap open and heard her gasp sharply, a sound which fuelled the instinct. Right now, his resistance was swimming in a sea of instinct, threatening to be drowned. Right now, the instinct was in control, and until he could 'regroup' his resistance troops, it didn't look good. Tori looked panicky, wrigging and trying to move, only to fall down with cries of pain as her legs prevented movement. She didn't have enough strength for any attacks, all she could do was survey the emotions in Jay's head, and right now, she could tell that Jay seemed to be fighting a hopeless battle, and he was not in control.

Pov change

She watched with horror as he walked steadily nearer, and shuddered when she saw his eyes. they were like a demon's, caring for nothing but its goal. A primal gaze of lust and passion that could only be gotten rid of one way.

"Jay!" She whispered. "Jay, stop it!" She heard a cry from the chasms of his mind, Lost...control! Need...fight...

He suddenly fell over, probably a sudden dart of resistance. However, Jay was not shaking with effort as he had been before, the resistance was gone again. He was nearing her. He stumbled, but didn't fall. A step later, he did fall over. He was now just a meter from her. He got up again, and closed the distance between them. he stepped back, then fell over again. Tori found she couldn't move, couldn't speak, could only watch wide eyed.

Jay got up again, then kneeled at her side, and Tori heard his fast breathing, saw the animal in his eyes. He softly rested his hand on her shoulder, then clenched his eyes shut and suddenly constricted her shoulder. Tori could see that Jay was trying to get free of the instincts, but wasn't doing very well. However, he was now shaking a bit with effort. He opened his eyes and saw Tori's terrified face, then clenched those eyes shut again,now shaking rather badly. He fell forward with exhaustion, then stopped himself from falling on Tori at the last second, then moved up a bit, not much.

His face was directly above hers, so close that Tori could feel his breath. She was breathing faster now too, both from panic and from being so close to him. His eyes were mostly that primal beast, his instincts, but she could see a spark there, a spark of defiance. She hoped it would grow.

"Jay... please...don't..." She whispered, then she suddenly felt dizzy and passed out, as had happened too often for her liking lately.

Chapter 25: Trepidation

Tori finally woke up to see something navy blue sitting on top of Jay, pinning him down with its weight and looking strangely cheerful.

"Um... hi?" Tori asked.

"Hi there! So you woke up. I'm Storm, and I was captured in Sinnoh then released here. I'm basically the only male around here who can control his instincts, so i help out the females that get assaulted by males stronger than them. I mean, you guys look human but smell pokemon, so i assumed you were some sort of shapeshifting pokemon or something..." Storm said, rather quickly. Tori could sense that he indeed had quite a bit of the male instinct, but unlike Jay had it under perfect control.

"Thanks... have you seen a baby latios around?"

"No. smelled one though. So, what do you want me to do with the male? It didn't look like he had your consent, so I ran in and dragged him away from you. What species are you, anyway?" Storm asked. Tori's heart lurched briefly, just how far had jay gotten? She was afraid to ask.

"I guess i'm a Morpheon, which means I can turn into any of the eeveelutions, eevee, hybrids between them and humans, and a human. I was actually born a human, but got turned into a pokemon not too long ago. As for Jay, he's a friend of mine, but keeps on getting buried by his instincts. Every time he's either knocked himself out trying to resist or got knocked out by someone else. Don't kill him, though I certainly might some day. What species are you?"

"Luxray. An electric type. Am I permitted to get off... Jay, was it?" Storm asked.

"Sure, just paralyze him if he tries anything. Wake him up." Tori replied, and in reply Jay was immediately sourrounded by crackling blue electricity and instantly woke up. "By the way, are there any powerful psychic pokemon around here that could help heal me? I sorta need to get back to my erm...real nest."

"There's a gardevoir...I'm sure she'd be happy to help. Will you be okay while I go fetch her?" Storm asked.

"yeah, I think I've got enough energy for a Matter melt right now." Tori answered. The Matter Melt was the name that had been given to the ghost's ability to move through solids, and contrary to popular belief it did take a small amount of energy to perform. Storm gave a curt nod before disappearing in a flash of navy blue. Jay was adamnatly staring at a thorn outside the den. Tori glared at him a bit, before giving a tired sigh and morphing into crypteon, resting her ghostly head on her paws.

The gardevoir had apparently decided to teleport to save time, and appeared promptly in the den with Storm.

"Her?" The gardevoir asked quietly, indicating Tori. Storm sniffed her, not recognising the form. He nodded in recognition.

"Yes." He answered. The gardevoir nodded briefly, before performing a quick put powerful recover, fixing Tori's limbs to the point where it was safe to move her. The psychic gave Jay a weak psybeam for good measure, either reading his thoughts and not liking them or reading either his or Tori's memeories with the same conclusion. She disappeared again, and Tori stood up weakly. She knew that she'd be unable to run, or do more than walk shakily for that matter, but it was better than nothing.

She assumed human form again, releasing Phoenix and using a revive and hyper potion on her.

"Oh dear, you got yourself into a mess, didn't you?" She remarked, bending her madjestic head to allow Tori's easy access to her back. Tori got on, and shot Jay a look.

"You going to get on a pokemon or not?" She asked irritably. She turned to Storm as Jay released Warrior. "Thanks for your help. I'm certainly glad that you decided to show up in time." She thanked sincerely, going into a psychic trance to search for Kula and call him. Storm nodded cheerily.

"I was glad to help. Make sure no more males give you trouble!" He replied cheerfully, waving his tail as Phoenix flapped out of the den, followed by warrior, into the blue sky. And then a blue shape joined them, flying up to Phoenix and perching on Tori's shoulder before disappearing in red light.

-----------

Eclipse had been practically tearing her hair out when no one was watching. Everywhere else, she put on her facade of indifference and slight annoyance. When she had given birth to Tori, she had already started founding Apocalypse, and didn't want to force Tori unknowingly into her destiny, and so gave her to an orphanage. She had been more than surprised when Tori had found her way there anyway, but also slighlty sad and disappointed, now that she knew what being a criminal meant. Always running and hiding, trusting no one but your friends. She cursed her destiny that her daughter now shared.

She had sent Tori's best friend out to find her... and then he goes missing as well. Just in case some Apocalypse-eating thing was out there, she decided to wait a little longer. Thankfully, two large ridden birds landed on the clifftop, Tori injured but nothing too bad for the psychic pokemon to fix.

Jay had not told Tori what Eclipse had said, and Eclipse hadn't either. She just watched, and wondered why Tori was so uneasy around what she had thought was her best friend. From this, she eventually made a descision.

"Jay, Tori, I'm promoting you both to admin. This does, however, mean that you will be apart. And you'll have to lead divisions... but you'll manage."

------------

Tori was relieved to be away from the danger that Jay posed, but at the same time felt strangely sad and lonely away from him, as if a part of her had been removed. She decided that it would go away, but it never did. over the days, it stayed there. A painful void inside her.

As well as that, a new problem had arisen, a problem which made her wonder why she wanted to see Jay again at all.

After days of puking in the mornings and a strangely large appetite, Equina had diagnosed her with pregnancy. She couldn't help but wonder if Jay had gone farther than Storm had implied, or if that strange Ninetales hadn't been stopped in time.

According to Equina, she would probably lay an egg in about a month, and for that it was better to be in pokemon form. The egg, when laid, was swirled with russet and brown. She was quite sure that aethreons were not russet, but it could always be from a flareon.

She was waiting nervously and curiously to see what would emerge from that egg.

**This story is a resubmission of Darktayle's story. Any replicas found elsewhere have been stolen. This has been posted with full approval from Darktayle, who wished to clear her profile while still allowing readers access to her previous works. This story will not be updated--again, if it is found elsewhere and has been updated, then it is a stolen idea and a stolen story.**

**Thank you.**


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